


Scars

by NoSanctuary



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: (But she is still referenced in this story!), Aftermath of Torture, Angry Daryl, Canon Divergent After 7.02, Daryl Has Issues, Death, Explicit Language, F/M, Graphic Violence, Homophobic Language, Hurt Daryl, Major Character Injury, My First Fanfic, Past Child Abuse, Racist Language, SEASON 7 SPOILERS/WILD SPECULATION, Sorry Beth Is Still Dead, This Could Be Bethyl or Caryl If You Squint, Torture, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:30:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 40,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8276102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoSanctuary/pseuds/NoSanctuary
Summary: There are some things we can't come back from. (After the horrific murders in the woods, Negan takes Daryl prisoner).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This is my first fanfic and I don't have anyone to proofread for me, so I'm sorry AND constructive feedback is welcome and super appreciated. I've got a plan for how this story will go and have already written some future chapters. I struggled with this first chapter and it is particularly bad--please stick with me, it will get better (I think)! Thanks for reading.

“Kneel.”

Daryl was being held upright roughly by a Savior on either side of him, and as soon as they loosened their grips he staggered down to his knees, unable to support himself. In the light of the room’s twin bare bulbs his skin was a sickly green-white, coated in sweat, and he was shivering. He didn’t give them any trouble as they removed his leather vest to toss to Dwight, who was waiting eagerly in the corner to catch it. Daryl hardly looked at Dwight as the scarred man slipped it on, shrugging his shoulders once and rolling his neck before he said, “Well, this _does_ fit real nice.” 

Daryl’s face remained blank, his gaze distant, barely conscious of the situation playing out in front of him. He struggled to breathe evenly, sickened by both the events of the past few hours and the constant dull roar of pain thundering from his gunshot shoulder. 

Dwight quickly crossed the room, pulling a switchblade from his pocket and flicking it open inches from Daryl’s cheek. He didn’t even earn a flinch. The flicker of anger that crossed Dwight’s face at the lack of a reaction caused the other Saviors to ‘ooo’ and chuckle.

“Move it the fuck along,” ordered Negan, tapping the end of Lucille against the concrete floor several times as impatience crept dangerously into his voice. Dwight quickly ducked his head, dropping to a knee before Daryl, and using the serrated part of his knife to saw off Daryl’s shirt. All the time, Daryl’s unfocused gaze looked past the man in front of him to the barb-wire-wrapped baseball bat, damp from a fresh wipe-down now rather than blood. Even with his eyes open, all he could see was it come down again and again against his friends’ heads.

His outward stoicism wasn’t bravado—there wasn’t room for anger or fear or anything besides the steady aching of loss in his chest, a physical pain he could hardly distinguish from his fresh wound. The taking had started weeks before with his bike and his crossbow, and then, more terribly, Denise. Now it had grown to Abraham…and Glenn…maybe even Carol…Daryl closed his eyes, wondering where she was, which was a mistake, as the visions of the brutal beatings from several hours prior played in full clarity against the dark backs of his eyelids. He swallowed painfully. When he opened his eyes, Dwight grinned triumphantly at him, before tossing the fabric remains aside and taking several rapid steps back to resume his place behind Negan. 

They had taken so much from him already, what was left? The rest of his family, to be sure, but they’d chosen to bring him and him alone back to their base, which meant for now, hopefully, his family was safe. And Daryl? There was nothing more they could take from just him, he was sure. 

Daryl tried to muster up a sneer, though it turned out as a grimace, and his eyes on Negan he spit onto the floor in front of him where Dwight had just stood. Immediately, the Savior holding his right arm cuffed him sharply across the back of his head and exclaimed, “Show some respect, bitch!” The second Savior simultaneously again loosed his grip, and Daryl crashed forward onto his hands and knees—though it would have been his face had they both fully let go.

“ _Fuck._ ” Negan let out a low whistle, taking a step closer and shaking his head.

“Somebody did a fuckin’ number on you.” In Negan’s voice there was genuine admiration, and Daryl could feel the man’s eyes moving slowly over the scars that littered his back, as though Negan was taking his own sweet time to appreciate each one. Two fresh ones stood out from the rest of the crisscrossing, pale lines, angry and red—a deep, though recently stitched, puncture from the day of the truck standoff with him, Sasha, and Abraham against Negan’s motorcycle-riding men, and a puckered exit wound from Dwight’s gunshot, oozing with a combination of congealed blood and pus. Those interested Negan less though, his gaze lingering on the old, jagged scores. “Who’d you piss off?”

“Fuck,” Daryl breathed hoarsely, voice barely a whisper, “you.” He was barely able to lift his head, but he did, and met Negan’s twinkling eyes with his own resolute, searing glare as he spoke, and he felt both men supporting him flinch at his words. 

“No, I do not fucking think so,” Negan quietly replied, malice bleeding through each word. Following a bated pause however, Negan rocked back on his heels and simply looked thoughtful, pausing for a moment before he let out a deep, booming laugh.

“This man’s got some fucking balls!” he shouted, grinning at the other men in the room, who hurried to smile along with him and even laugh as well. 

“More than any of you fuckin’ pussies, in fact,” Negan said, looking around the room once more. The laughter quickly died down, replaced by matching sullen and stern faces as Negan’s own face morphed into a scowl. He turned on his heel to face the archer on all fours before him.

“See, Daryl, your fucking group? They got the fuckin’ message when I bashed your fucking friends’ skulls the fuck in. But you? You’re clearly just a bit fucking slower on the uptake, aren’t you?” As Negan spoke, he slowly, delicately even, peeled back one black leather glove, then the other, from each hand, before slamming them against Dwight’s chest, who with a puff of an exhale from the force of the blow, reached up just in time to take them. Negan then stalked forward to loom over Daryl, his boots thudding heavily closer on the concrete floor.

“That’s how you fuckin’ got all those fuckin’ scars, isn’t it?” In the dim yellow of the exposed lightbulbs the shadows crossing Negan's face were sharp and angular. Negan grinned wickedly in the half light, his teeth gleaming, leather jacket groaning as he rolled his muscled shoulders. 

“Because you’re a stupid fucking cunt who’s slow as shit at getting the fucking point, aren’t you?” Negan's voice was a menacing growl now. The two men at either side of Daryl almost seemed to be recoiling, and Negan waved them dismissively away, quickly reaching out with one hand to catch Daryl by his wounded shoulder and stop the man from crashing to the floor.

“Uh uh,” Negan tutted, waving one finger on his free hand back and forth in front of Daryl’s face, and then digging his thumb into the front, and his pointer and middle finger into the back, of the bullet hole through Daryl’s shoulder. Daryl let out a strangled cry, biting down on his lower lip to silence himself, as Negan slowly worked his fingers deeper into the wound.

“You don’t get off that fuckin’ easy,” he snarled into the archer’s face, before his voice raised to a shout. “You gotta learn!”

With that, he slung a heavy fist upwards into Daryl’s sternum and Daryl choked, a mixture of saliva and sweat spraying onto the floor from his pale face. Negan’s second punch connected directly with Daryl’s nose. There was a sickening crunch of cartilage and Daryl crumpled forward, gasping. Negan shook the blood from his fist, rising to stand, and delivering a thudding kick to Daryl’s side. Daryl grunted, and involuntarily pulled his elbows and knees in towards himself from where he lay, unable to rise further. Another kick, and he felt fire spread through his ribs, and another, this time to his face, and he turned over onto his back, searing pain spreading outward from his eye socket, his one good arm weakly brought up to shield his face, breathing ragged. 

“Don’t you fucking pass out on me yet, boy!” Negan howled, and the blows rained down.


	2. Chapter 2

_He opened his eyes to find that he was sitting on a swinging wooden porch chair, though he wasn’t moving. He blinked dazedly, eyes traveling up the chains that suspended his seat, then out into the rolling pastures beyond. He could see a wooden barn, still clearly standing and unburnt when by all rights it should have been charred rubble and ashes. He could see a breeze move the seedy heads of the grass, but he couldn’t hear it. He realized he didn’t hear anything—no crickets, no cows. This looked like the Greene farm—but it didn’t feel like it._

_“Hi Daryl.”_

_He started at her voice so badly, he was halfway out of the chair before he’d turned to look at her. She was wearing the green hospital scrubs she'd had on at Grady, her braid tucked into her pony-tail. She looked exactly how he last remembered her--almost. Unable to help himself, his eyes left hers, searching her forehead for that small, red hole, and her hair for the blood. When he met her gaze again, she was smiling sadly at him._

_“It’s gone. Stuff like that…” and she gestured towards him now, “doesn’t come here.” At her words, Daryl looked down at himself. He couldn't feel the gunshot wound he'd taken to the shoulder, or any of the broken bones or bruises he'd taken from the beating—he felt fine._

_As suddenly as if they'd materialized from thin air, but with the steady cadence of having been there all along, he could hear the murmurs of voices inside the home. A woman laughing and then, and the lower tones of a man, and then he heard the laughter of a little girl. He recognized all of them and his heart leapt into his throat. He stood fully and started to move towards the screen door._

_“Don’t,” she said, and there was a firmness there that stopped him, despite his eagerness to see the faces of his lost family members. Lori--Hershel. Sophia. If he could see Sophia. And he heard others now too. His expression became sullen, though he still obeyed._

_“Where are we?” he demanded._

_“You know.” She looked at him with sadder eyes still now, whether it was from where they were or the manner with which he was treating their meeting after so long, and he bristled at what might have been sympathy._

_“Then why I am I here?” he demanded again._

_“I don’t know.” She’d been sitting on the porch steps, twisted to face him, and hadn’t made to move closer. He wondered if she didn't want to, or if she couldn't._

_“You’re dead and I ain’t,” he continued gruffly, looking back out at the farm fields because he couldn’t look at her. Even though she was here with him, and sounds of conversation and clatter of dishes from dinner being eaten inside the house carried with an odd clarity over the unnatural quiet to the porch, everything felt strangely…empty. "This isn't real."_

_She looked hurt at this last statement, but quickly hid it. Somehow, she was still happy to see him, and she was holding on to it. “You’re more prickly then you were when I last saw you,” she retorted, and when he looked at her again, her lips were quirked farther and her smile reached her eyes. She was teasing him._

_“Yeah, well, when you last saw me was a long time ago,” he responded without humor. He wasn’t meeting her eyes again, looking at his hands and fiddling with the sleeves of his jacket. He could feel that her gaze was still on him and felt a flare of frustration at the nerves that had begun to bubble in his stomach. He brought a hand to his mouth, chewing at the knuckle of his thumb. He wondered what she saw now, looking at him. If he was a disappointment. He didn't like how just being around her again, even in this unreality, made him self-conscious of who he'd become since her death. She looked at him as though he'd had choices. He hadn't._

_Normally stubbornly silent, he found himself instead seeking to fill this place’s eerie silence, a habit he had also realized during their weeks alone together Beth's presence seemed to provoke. “You shouldn’t look at me like that. Like you could still know me." He stopped biting his fingers when he abruptly felt a sharp sting and realized they'd begun to bleed. So he could bleed here. Wherever this was. "There ain’t nothin’ good left,” he finished, and he wasn’t sure if he meant in the world or in himself._

_Her gaze still remained on him, and while it retained its softness, it had begun to burn into him. Daryl didn’t know if he wanted to have her turn away from him to leave or come towards him to comfort him, but she wasn’t doing either. He brought his hands down to clench the railing in front of him as the fire crept across his side that was facing her, his neck, his cheek, and he felt it spread like a burn smoldered on skin until relieved by water._

_"You're trying to shut me out," she told him, and once again, the sturdiness had returned to her voice. There was almost a sharpness to it--a rebuke. Even as he tried to reinforce the distance between them, he knew she couldn't be intimidated, not like others, and not on this, when she knew she was right._

_He turned on her._

_“All you have are memories, and that ain’t me anymore!” he shouted, and then he fell silent. His rage had no one to receive it--she was gone. As quickly as it had come, it subsided. While the porch felt only as empty as before, a cold began to creep in, tugging at the buttons of his shirt._

_“Beth?” he called softly, looking around, though he knew she hadn’t actually moved—she’d simply vanished.The sky and its light shifted to gray around him, and then the colors of the porch and the house themselves began to fade as well. Daryl suddenly wasn’t sure she’d ever even been there. He felt his throat tighten and his heart begin to race as he looked around desperately, clinging to this imaginary place even as it, like everything else, slipped through his fingers._

_“Beth!” he called again, louder this time, panic rising into his voice, but the farm faded from his eyes and he saw only darkness._

 

...

 

Daryl woke to find himself still bare from the waist up, his belt and shoes also taken from him, and a light cool pressure coming and going from his face. The smell of iodine hit his crooked nose. His eyes flickered open to see a pair of cool blue ones and soft features looking back at him, and as the woman came into view and recognition dawned, the contrasts between her and his dream screamed at him and he curled his lip. He tried to pull back from her, but discovered his back was already against the stone wall, and his hands and feet were bound before him. 

“Who’s Beth?” she asked.

“Get the fuck away from me.” 

It came out quieter and less mean then he’d meant it, though his voice was still harsh. Honey didn’t respond for a moment, continuing to reapply the freshly wetted sponge to the area just below his cheekbone. From the heat Daryl felt emanating from his face and his impaired vision on that side, he knew it was badly swollen.

“You were mumbling her name in your sleep,” she commented, her tone offhand as if to convey she’d only really been mildly interested.

He let out a snarl, before reaching up to grab her wrist roughly, and force it away, digging his fingers hard into the soft underside of her forearm, and pulling her within inches of him. Even with his eyesight impeded, he didn’t miss her recoil as his hot breath hit her her face, and he felt a surge of satisfaction. From the momentary look of alarm on her face, it was clear she was surprised he had as much strength in him as he did. He didn’t want kindness, didn’t deserve it after what had happened, and he certainly didn’t want it from her. 

A hammer clicked and he stilled, though he could barely manage to turn his head enough to see the source.

“Don’t try anything more bud,” another Savior said from the periphery of his vision. Honey’s widened eyes bore straight into his then, and he saw a stronger, wilder fear there, and was unsure of the cause. _Don't_ , she mouthed at him. He released her arm, his hand falling heavily to his side, strength leaving him, and she fell back onto her heels momentarily, though she recovered quickly.

“You need this,” she told him shortly, her face once again expressionless, “or these will get infected. We don’t have antibiotics to spare on a prisoner.” 

Daryl saw now the small metal bowl containing the iodine-water dilution Honey continued to periodically dip her sponge in. She brought it a final time to his cheekbone, her fingers lightly brushing against where his skin had been hit so hard it had scabbed, before briefly working over a severe abrasion on his forehead. The tension that contracted muscles across the entirety of his body, now that he was conscious of her touch, was not lost on either of them. She moved the sponge lightly over an abrasion on his chest, just below the gunshot wound she’d stitched, and then without meaning to, her hand following her eyes, down the path of a wide silver scar. Daryl’s sharp intake of breath disturbed her from her thoughts and she jumped, dropping the sponge back into her bowl with a splash.

Her eyes quickly found his and she was met with a scowl. “Well, that’s enough. I'd already gotten to most of this while you were unconscious. You won’t die…at least not yet,” she stated gruffly, quickly grabbing her things and standing. Then, without another glance, she turned on her heel, the Savior exiting right behind her, and the door closing behind him with a click, followed resounding echo of a bar sliding into place.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song belongs to the Eagles and not me.

“You know, you could end all this.”

Negan spoke casually as he paced back and forth in front of Daryl. The archer was kneeling, though it had taken several blows from the Saviors now standing in the shadowy corner to bring him to do so. In spite of his desire not to, Daryl looked up at the larger man through his greasy bangs.

“You could help us. Hell, you could almost be one of us,” Negan said, some humor in his voice as he spread his arms palms up, gesturing at the compound that they were in. “You probably fuckin’ would be, if we’d found you first.”

Daryl knew what Negan saw. Someone made for how things were now, hardened to this world from the last one. Someone very much not like the other Alexandrians. An outsider. All truths in their own way, but only parts of the whole of who Daryl was. Daryl looked down, and licked his cracked lips.

“Those fucking people you were with? Rick? They’re weak. But you, you could be better than them," Negan continued.

Daryl closed his eyes and swallowed painfully at the mention of his family. Six days had passed since the night Negan had brutally beaten two of them to death. Daryl again, involuntarily, wondered where Carol had been that night, if she was still alive. He wondered what had happened to Maggie—to her baby—and thought how, even if they’d both survived, they would continue without Glenn. Because of him.

Negan’s booming laughter as he loomed over Daryl made the archer flinch and open his eyes. Negan shook his head, still chuckling, as he said, “No, I suppose you can’t. You _were_ the one who tried to stop me from crushing that chinaman and got the ginger killed, weren’t you.” Daryl hated himself for it, but he couldn’t hold Negan’s gaze, his eyes dropping again to the floor as his shoulders slumped. 

 ---

_That night, as Negan brought the bat down against Glenn’s skull, he’d thrown himself forward, screaming, with no clear intention but only knowing he couldn’t allow this to happen. Though he was easily slammed to the ground and held there by Dwight, he continued to fight him. It was only once Glenn’s body was lifeless, his head hardly more than bits of flesh and bone on the ground, that Daryl felt his strength leave him and lay still, at which point he was quickly hauled back into line._

_Negan’s tutted at him and shook his head. “What did I just tell you about no fucking interruptions,” he said, his voice mock-scolding. Maggie’s soft whimpers punctuated the silence between his sentences. Negan’s voice grew icy with his next words. “Now, I fuckin’ said I only wanted to kill one of you to teach you all a fucking lesson, but you aren’t making this easy.” He stood in front of Daryl now, bringing Lucille to rest against the archer’s chin, and pressing up slightly. Daryl flinched as the barbs pressed into the soft skin of his throat, but held Negan’s gaze steadily. “I was trying to teach, but you weren’t fuckin’ listening,” he growled, his voice a menacing whisper, though in the complete silence it carried across the clearing._

_He looked around the trembling group and raised his voice, shrugging his shoulders. “Guess that means I’ve got to teach the lesson again!” Daryl forced himself to not look away as Negan hauled back on the bat. ‘Better not to be the last man standing after all,’ he thought, recalling the bold claim Beth had made that night at the moonshine shack, and he set his jaw defiantly. Each time they lost someone, another piece of him was ripped away, and he wondered how many people he could lose before it completely destroyed him. In some ways, there was some peace to be had by going finally, especially in the place of one of his friends. But Negan was cruel, and he’d played this game before, and he knew what loyalty unto death looked like, and when the bat came down, it wasn’t against Daryl’s face, but rather, the stoic ginger several paces to his left._

 ---

Daryl was pulled from his memories by several fingers snapping in front of his face. A steel rod was brought to rest against the underside of his jaw in the same manner as that night, this time forcing his gaze back to Negan’s, who was shaking his head down at him.

“I’ve got to fuckin’ watch you. You’re a poor fucking listener, as fuckin’ poor as you are a learner. Here I am spouting off fuckin’ wisdom and you’ve checked out.” 

The man cleared his throat and continued. “What I was saying is, you’re like a fuckin’ dog. You fuckin’ know that right? Don’t matter how you’re treated or how they see you, you’ve got loyalty in your fuckin’ bones, to hell with if it makes any fucking sense. You’ll fuckin’ die for them, like a fucking dog. And make no mistake, you will die _like a fuckin’ dog_.” 

Negan sucked in a deep breath, bringing his hands together in a loud clap to indicate that he was reaching the summary of his thoughts, before continuing.

“Which to me is just, it’s just fuckin’ funny, because I don’t see any of them doing the same for you. Do you want to know why?” He smiled, and leaned down over the archer, his face close enough Daryl flinched involuntarily at the spit and heat of his breath when he said, “Because _you’re a fucking dog._ ”

The heel of Negan’s hand slammed against the side of Daryl’s head, punctuating the end of the sentence and he curled down on himself, bringing his bound hands up instinctively in front of his face. He didn’t have much time to think about Negan’s words— _lies_ —before he couldn’t think at all from the pain. Negan struck the rod against his side, causing him to cry out as it connected with bruised or possibly already cracked ribs. The next blow caused an audible slap as the metal connected with his exposed bicep. 

_“Sometimes there’s a part of me,  
_ _Has to turn from here and go…”_

He could hear the words, soft and light, drifting through the noise of the room he was in, and he clung to the voice. 

_“Running like a child from these warm stars,  
_ _Down the Seven Bridges road…”_

As the rod came down again, white-hot pain blinded Daryl but even as his vision blurred and he collapsed down to the floor, he found himself struggling to see the source of the song, though somewhere in his heart he knew he wouldn’t.

_“There are stars in the Southern sky,  
And if ever you decide you should go…” _

To his eyes, the room was growing lighter. He still couldn’t see her, but he reached a hand up before him, searching. Though he felt the pain, it was something distant and alien, and his mind didn’t register the source as someone laughed and struck his fingers. He was barely aware that another Savior had grabbed him by the hair and hauled him upright. The pipe connected with his face knocking him onto his back and someone was screaming, he was screaming Daryl realized, but now the singing was growing louder and the rest of it was fading to a low humming, and then to nothing at all.

_“There is a taste of time-sweetened honey,  
Down the Seven Bridges road…” _

In his mind, he was still reaching out towards that song, that golden lightness he couldn’t quite touch, and he wanted to get on his knees and beg her forgiveness for before, but his mouth wouldn’t move. Vaguely, he was aware that he was choking on the blood that was pouring from his nose, and of someone rolling him onto his stomach, beating his back heavily with a fist and causing him to cough and spit. His lips were finally moving now but still no sound would come out.  The song stopped. 

“I’m not mad,” she said quietly and as a smaller, soft hand slid into his own, a sense of calm washed over Daryl and everything stopped.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is from Rick's POV.

Rick stood quietly at Negan’s side, watching half of Alexandria’s supplies disappear into the back of several SUV’s and trucks, his hands in his pockets. He alternated between glancing towards the Saviors’ leader and keeping his eyes downcast submissively on the ground. His stomach was twisting violently with a toxic mixture of rage, fear, and hatred, but outwardly he tried to appear only moderately nervous. After minutes had passed in silence and most of the town’s goods had been loaded, he turned slightly towards Negan.

“Daryl?” he asked quietly, and the helplessness in his voice was not feigned.

Negan chuckled, and then turned and signaled towards a black jeep on the end of the line up. Rick could see the Savior in the driver’s seat twist around in his seat, but that was all. Another Savior opened the back passenger door, reached in, and hauled someone out. Though his friends’ head was down and he was clad in a bulky, off-white prison uniform, Rick recognized Daryl immediately. When Daryl looked up, Rick took in the damage—his friends’ face was heavily bruised, moving from black to blue around his eyes, fading to yellows and greens down his cheekbones and jaw, though the right side also was colored over with fresh, broken-bone purple, and his nose was clearly broken. All-over his features were punctuated by partially scabbed abrasions. The discolored marks traveled down his neckline and disappeared into the collar of his jumpsuit. The next visible parts of his body were his hands, which were bound before him, several fingers clearly bent and swollen. His feet weren’t bound but as he was dragged forward, Rick saw that his left leg lagged distinctly with each step, causing him to stumble as the Savior hauled him forward faster then he could walk. 

“I got the man some appropriate fucking clothes, made some fuckin’ improvements—what do you think?” Nega crowed, watching him intently. Rick tried to keep the new waves of fury and horror rising simultaneously within him from his face but could feel his expression wavering. The Savior who’d been pulling Daryl suddenly shoved him away and Rick lunged forward to catch his friend before he hit the ground. He took his knife from his belt and cut the binding from Daryl’s hands, revealing wrists that had been rubbed raw and oozing, then placed one of his friend’s arms around his shoulder so he could support his weight. Daryl grunted in pain but said nothing else, and Rick began to half-carry his friend towards the town gate. They only made it a few paces.

“Now hang the fuck on a minute,” Negan’s voice boomed from behind him and Rick winced involuntarily, “I need _you_ here Rick.” 

The pair stopped in their tracks and Rick glanced over at his friend, who’s gaze remained focused on the ground, his long hair obscuring his eyes. Time seemed to slow down, the seconds ticking by agonizingly as Rick's mind raced, staring at Alexandria's walls, trying to find a solution. 

"Carol?" Daryl ground out, perhaps sensing his window to learn anything was closing, and Rick heard the smallest twinge of hopefulness in his friend's voice. Daryl didn't know she'd left, Rick realized, only that she hadn't been there the night in the woods and she wasn't here now.

"She's gone. Left the same day Abraham and Glenn...don't know where. Morgan and I, we followed her but--" he stopped, unsure of what to say. "Morgan went after her." He felt Daryl slump.

"Mag--" Daryl started to ask, but Negan cleared his throat loudly.

Slowly, painstakingly, Rick began to turn the two of them around. He was stooped under the majority of Daryl’s weight, and after each shuffling step he had to pause for Daryl to drag his left leg to catch up. Once they’d fully rotated around, he only took his eyes off Negan when the man nodded at someone behind him, and suddenly Michonne was at to his side. Their eyes only met briefly before she lifted Daryl’s other arm over her shoulder. The archer failed to stifle a pained yelp. Michonne paused and allowed Daryl to adjust his weight as best as he could, before the two of them began the torturous process of turning around once again and heading for Alexandria’s gate. This was all a game of cat and mouse, Negan enjoying tormenting for torment's sake. Rick didn’t dare to allow his gaze to follow them, instead keeping it focused vaguely on the Saviors, his shoulders slumped and hands once again hiding in his jeans’ pockets, seeking to appear effectively cowed.

“Thank you all very fucking much for your cooperation,” Negan said, arms wide and gesturing at the whole group.

The doors and beds on the vehicles started to slam shut, but rather than loading up, many of the Saviors came to stand by the front ends of their vehicles—waiting for Negan to say it was time to head out. The man himself turned towards his own car, Lucille hanging loosely from his hand, and despite being far from a man of God, Rick found himself praying for the man to go, _just go_. Negan’s free hand reached for the handle of the car, but then he paused. Rick stiffened and he felt the tension spread through the Alexandrians who were also watching. Negan turned back around to face his captive audience.

“You know, you all did a fine job with handing over _my_ supplies this week, but how do I know you’ll keep it up?” he mused. Rick felt his stomach drop into his boots.

“I mean,” Negan continued, “this week, I had some collateral, but I just handed it over.” He paused. “And I _did_ just spend a week putting a lot of work into having a pet. I think I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll take _it_ back.”

Rick couldn’t help it; he looked to where Daryl and Michonne had made it to—the threshold of the open gate—and had, once again, rotated themselves to face the conversation. Michonne’s face was murderously rigid, but Daryl’s was a mask. The two exchanged a look and began to hobble forward.

“No—“ Rick began, and the word was harsh and torn from his throat. White hot fury was coursing through his veins. He didn’t know what he could do, but he did know he couldn’t allow his friend to go back with these people. They'd had a plan, a way to take down Negan, but it required time--and from the looks of things Daryl didn't have that. Negan, raised his eyebrows and looked interested to see what came next but they were interrupted.

“Rick,” Daryl said, and it was the sharpness and distress that caught the sheriff’s attention. Though the archer’s jaw was set, as though to stop a torrent of words to the contrary from flooding out, he shook his head at Rick. “I’ll go.” The silence that followed was deafening. As the pair drew close to him, Rick stepped forward, laying a hand gently against his friend’s free shoulder, leaning forward until their foreheads touched. He didn’t miss the flinch at the contact, or the trembling that had spread across Daryl's body.

“We will come for you, brother,” he said quietly, for only Daryl and Michonne’s ears. Daryl winced again, closing his eyes as if the words alone pained him.

“Alright, wrap up the love-fest you faggots,” Negan said sharply. Rick moved to Daryl’s other side, attempting to aid Michonne in making the hand-off to the Saviors gentle. The Saviors though had no inclinations to be so however, and when Negan held up a hand to stop Rick and Michonne, the Saviors allowed Daryl to stumble almost to his knees before hauling him up roughly by his armpits, re-binding his hands, and shoving him onto his stomach in the seat of the car he’d come from.

“See you next week,” Negan quipped cheerfully, offering them a single wave before disappearing into the driver's seat.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to those who've already been reading, I've gone back and added this chapter. See end for notes.

Daryl was sitting slumped against the wall, listlessly passing in and out of awareness of where he was, when he was jerked back to reality by the loud groan of the door to the room opening. He tensed, anticipating an entrance, but instead—nothing.

He stared unblinking at the doorway, golden light from the hall spilling across the threshold and into the dimness of the room, and he listened, hard. Still nothing. He sat unmoving, an animal frozen on the precipice of fight or flight, and he only realized he was holding his breath when the burning in his chest cut back into his senses and he drew a rasping gasp. His instincts, screaming that this was a trap, were warring horribly with his desire to go for the door.

When he finally made his decision, he did it fast, lunging forward onto his hands and knees. The small amount of painkillers he’d been allowed that morning were a blessing, the pain that jolted through him at the jarring movement feeling dull and distant. Though loosely so, his hands and feet were still bound, so his progress was painfully slow as he crawled towards the door, ears straining for any sound. As he neared the threshold he heard snoring and he gingerly covered the final few feet to the door. In the threshold, he paused, sitting back on his knees and bringing his hands up to shield his eyes, the bright light of the hallway hurting his eyes and making him squint. As his sight returned he saw collapsed on the floor to his right was the guard, breathing but unconscious, drool dribbling from his lip. Other than that, the hallway was empty, the only sound a soft, electrical buzzing from the light fixtures. His eyes skimmed over the man’s body, looking for anything he could use—the gun holster at his hip was empty and Daryl’s nostrils flared as he sucked in a deep breath, the alarm bells ringing louder. There was a knife sheathed behind the holster though and without hesitation Daryl drew it and plunged into into the guard’s temple in one smooth motion. He then turned his attention to his bonds, cutting them loose. The man had worn only a thin t-shirt and jeans—not worth spending the time to take, though Daryl wiped the knife clean on them. He stooped to unlace the guard’s boots, and peel off his socks, then jammed his feet into them—too tight, but he’d manage. He limped down the corridor at the fastest speed he could manage, free hand against the wall to steady himself.

As he turned into the next, wider hallway, he head voices and footfalls approaching, and he fumbled with the handle of the closest door, stepping behind and closing it partially as the two men rounded the corner. He battled to slow his ragged breathing and risked a glance behind him to find he was in room containing two beds, but alone. As he registered this he simultaneously felt relief that there weren’t occupants and his unease about the situation grow. Trap or not, there was little he could do now. Once the two men had passed around the next bend and the hallway had fallen silent once more, Daryl exited his hiding place and continued on. 

He’d been hooded and barely conscious when he was brought in, and had no clue the size of the compound or the layout, but this appeared to be a main hallway. While he was more confident that this would take him to an entrance, it would likely be well guarded. On the other hand, he knew he was moving slow and if this wasn’t a set-up, his time was limited before someone realized he was missing. He weighed his options and chose a smaller offshoot. When he came to another intersection, he chose his next direction as it was the one he _didn’t_ hear lively voices carrying down. His final turn he made because he saw an exit placard that hailed from the days before the world had ended, and because he heard two people conversing and moving towards him. He paused after rounding the corner—he tried the handle of a door on his right and found it locked. He could see the door to freedom at the end of the hallway, a good twenty-five feet away, steel with a metal bar across it, the un-illuminated remains of an emergency exit sign above. If they turned, he wouldn’t make it to the end without being spotted. Daryl drew himself up against the wall, one hand gripping the knife, his two busted fingers unable to fully bend around its handle, his other hand a raised fist, and he held his breath.

When they came around the corner, Daryl grabbed the first person within reach, biting down on his lip at the pain that shot through his fingers as he twisted them in her hair and pulled her head back, bringing the knife blade flush to her throat. He raised the pointer finger of his armed hand to rest in front of his lips and indicate silence to her friend. He took several steps backwards with his captive, allowing the second woman—hardly more than a girl, really, Daryl now saw—to come fully around the corner and out of sight of the main hall. He loosed his hand from the woman’s hair, fumbling over her coat to her belt where he found a second knife, and he took that from her. The girl kept her lips pressed together firmly, but she shook her head violently and the fear and tears that rapidly brimmed her eyes looked sincere. Daryl briefly wondered how he looked to them, covered in fresh wounds and bruises, a shirtless madman in a dark hallway.

“Please,” the woman he had pulled tight against him whispered, and he could feel the vibrations of her words in his hands that restrained her, “don’t.”

“Weapons,” he ordered. He hardly recognized his own voice, so hoarse and low.

“Just the knife,” the woman replied softly. “Otherwise we’re unarmed. We work around here, mostly,” she added in explanation.

“Give me the sheath,” he responded, and she reached down, hands trembling as she partially undid her belt and started to pull it off. “No,” Daryl amended, considering his own pathetic state, “turn around and give me the belt too.” He felt her stiffen further at what he’d asked, and in this world even more so than the last, it wasn’t hard to imagine where that came from. He offered no reassurances. She slowly turned, and he brought the knife back to rest under her chin, between them, never taking his eyes off the girl behind her, who stood frozen. The woman reached around him, bringing the belt around his back and roughly fastening it in the front.

“There,” she breathed, and there was a soft fury to her voice now, a dare that he try anything more. 

Daryl weighed his options. He could take one of them with him, as a hostage, try to use them as a bargaining piece if he was caught. They’d likely fight him though, and slow him down.

“Your jacket,” he grunted, and she carelessly yanked at one sleeve, then the other, and pulled it free, shoving it into his chest.

He looked again at the girl who still watched him, terror petrifying her, and he made a decision. Maybe a mistake. He released the women and stepped away quickly, sheathing her knife but still holding his before him. All three of them stared at each other for a long moment, before he turned and hobbled for the exit, donning the coat as he went. The silence behind him told him they weren’t following, or walking away.

When he hit the metal door, it took several blows to open it, and he found it was night. Though now outside, he still had a wall on either side, and he limped to the end of the alley, and peered around the corner. He could see the glow of lights along a tall, barbed-wire topped fence, and in two guard towers, but the yard before him was dark. He took a deep breath and stepped out.

Floodlights came up and he was blinded as the yard became as bright as day. Once again, his hands came up to shield his eyes and he blinked frantically, trying to recover. Something bumped his should heavily, and he swung the knife blindly, hearing the air whoosh as he made contact with nothing. Chuckling came from his right, but five feet out of reach. His eyes were watering still but for the second time on this night, his vision returned. He reached down and pulled the second knife, and clutching the small weapons in front of him turned slowly 360 degrees, to find himself ringed by six unsavory looking men. None of them moved in on him, or drew their weapons, instead keeping their distance to about ten feet and grinning menacingly. As he completed his circle, he heard familiar laughter.

“You _are_ a savage fuckin’ prick, ain’t you?” Negan said, “Killing a man in his sleep.” Negan inclined his head toward’s his captive and smirked. “But then, we knew you would do shit like that,” he added. “Lenny needed to go, was having some trouble respecting the _rules_ we have about our women here, so we drugged him and you did us a favor. Took out the trash,” he drawled. 

Daryl felt his heart drop into his stomach. Even though his instincts had wailed that this couldn’t be real, he’d had to try— _he’d had to_. 

"But then, you didn't hurt those women, did you?" Negan said, raising his eyebrows, and there was something close to interest in his voice.

Daryl's mind was racing, grasping at straws for a solution as his eyes jumped from one opponent to the next. He couldn’t have just stayed in that cell and consigned himself to dying. As he took in each face, he saw their cruel pleasure at the situation. These were the kind of men who'd have enjoyed torturing animals, or worse, before the turn, and to them that's all he was--a big animal--and he saw no way out. The reality of the situation was crushing and despair crashed over him in a wave. The hope he hadn't realized he'd had glowing in his chest fizzled out. Even as the lights in him went out, he wasn’t prepared to just give up and lie down in the mud. He couldn’t. Daryl lunged at the man directly in front of him, but the man simply stepped backwards, easily evading his swing. Laughter spread around the circle.

“You didn’t _really_ think you could _leave_ , did you?” Negan asked chidingly. “I mean, you only just fucking got here—kinda hurts my fuckin’ feelings!”

Daryl lunged again, and a man to his side landed a fist against his face as his leg wobbled, threatening to give out, and he stumbled. His next strike skimmed its target though, cutting a superficial but long wound from hip to hip and causing his victim to yowl and stagger backwards. This appeared to signal the end of the games and everyone moved in on him at once. Daryl landed two more blows, one planting and leaving a knife in the gut of a man who backed away groaning and grasping at it. The second sliced another opponent from his chin to just shy of the man’s eye, before Daryl's arm was twisted behind his back and the second knife pried from his hands. Two of the men held him that way, his arms wrenched up so hard his shoulder blades almost touched, as he breathed heavily, sweat running to the end of his nose and his eyes glimmering.

“Oh,” Negan said, shaking his head and tutting with mock disapproval, “Daryl, you’ve _really_ got to fucking learn.”

Daryl’s captors threw him to the ground and the group began to land fisted blows against his head and arms and booted kicks against his sides and legs. "Pull him out of the mud before he drowns," Negan quipped, but the ma didn’t actually call them off until the archer had passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I came back and added this chapter because as I was writing, it bothered me that Daryl hadn't made an attempt to escape--it felt out of character. And then I had this idea, and well, it seemed in character for Negan. =P


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to clarify for those who missed it, I went back and added this little segment to the last chapter after posting it, because I realized it didn't make sense for Daryl to not attempt to get any information about his missing friend:
> 
> The pair stopped in their tracks and Rick glanced over at his friend, who’s gaze remained focused on the ground, his long hair obscuring his eyes. Time seemed to slow down, the seconds ticking by agonizingly as Rick's mind raced, staring at Alexandria's walls, trying to find a solution.
> 
> "Carol?" Daryl ground out, perhaps sensing his window to learn anything was closing, and Rick heard the smallest twinge of hopefulness in his friend's voice. Daryl didn't know she'd left, Rick realized, only that she hadn't been there the night in the woods and she wasn't here now.
> 
> "She's gone. Left the same day Abraham and Glenn...don't know where. Morgan and I, we followed her but--" he stopped, unsure of what to say. "Morgan went after her." He felt Daryl slump.
> 
> "Mag--" Daryl started to ask, but Negan cleared his throat loudly.
> 
> Slowly, painstakingly, Rick began to turn the two of them around.
> 
> ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dwight entered the room with Negan and didn’t wait for Daryl to placate his leader on his own, instead immediately crossing to where the archer sat with his back against the wall. Daryl’s eyes were only half open and he appeared disinterested—both in appeasing Negan and apparently, in what happened to him.

“Come on,” Dwight muttered under his breath, lifting one arm to try to pull him up, but Daryl dead-weighted him. “A little help here!” Dwight snapped over his shoulder, and at no indication not to from Negan, a second Savior crossed the room to assist Dwight in dragging Daryl forward, the archer’s feet scuffing the floor as he made only a half-hearted attempt to walk with them. Daryl dropped down to kneel when they released him, though possibly as much from his knees buckling as from compliance.

“Thank you,” Negan said curtly, and then he began to pace back and forth, his hands held behind his back. Daryl’s gaze remained on the floor, and he watched as Negan’s leather boots passed in and out of view, never moving his eyes from straight ahead. Several minutes passed in silence.

“Some of my men went out on a run a couple fuckin’ weeks ago and never came back,” Negan finally began. “So I sent another party out. They found the car—covered in fuckin’ blood and full as shit of bullet holes. Now, you and I both fuckin’ know, there’s enough psychos out there—could have been anyone.”

A small painkiller dosage Daryl’d been allowed the past several mornings dulled the pain all over his body, but also fogged his mind. Negan paused, shaking his head, and then he stopped pacing, coming to stand directly in front of the archer. Daryl couldn’t help tensing, wondering where this was going.

“But then I heard a rumor from my friends at another settlement about some staff-wielding karate-nigger who turned up recently…you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Negan had reached out to grip his chin tightly between his fingers, forcing him to make eye contact, and sending splitting pain radiating up Daryl’s bruised face.

“No,” Daryl forced out through teeth that were gritted to stop himself from gasping at the throbbing sensation.

“Hmmm,” Negan murmured. His eyes never left Daryl’s face, and Daryl briefly closed his own to escape the other man’s probing look. When he opened there, Negan was still there waiting, his smile wolfish and wide as he continued. 

“I almost forgot!” Negan sucked in through his teeth, then turned and spit. When he faced Daryl again he was grinning gleefully.

“He brought a women along with him, all shot up, and apparently hysterical. White, forties…short grey hair…” 

Daryl did everything he could to keep his face impassive, but he couldn’t stop the thoughts racing across his mind. Carol was _alive_ —or she had been, days ago. His heart thundered through his chest, into his throat, at this piece of information. Fearful questions immediately followed and Daryl crushed them down—if that place was communicating with Negan, the more the man learned about Carol and Morgan’s connection to their group, the more danger they’d be in. 

It was too late though. Negan snapped his fingers triumphantly. “Bingo!” he declared. “You know her. Care to share anything else?”

Daryl was remained silent, battling to keep his mind closed down and empty. Negan laughed at him. “She’d been shot 5 or 6 times. Bitch was moaning shit like, ‘Just let me die.’” There was a violent twisting sensation in his gut that Daryl couldn't settle at the information he’d just been given. Negan's eyes were locked on Daryl’s, and Daryl felt him peeling back his stony expression despite his best efforts, dissecting him, reading his mind. He couldn’t stop him.

“Oh ho, I got you! You care about her! This dog’s got an extra soft spot for aged pussy!” Negan howled at his audience behind him, which in addition to Dwight and the man who’d helped him, consisted of an additional two Saviors who’d been brought in to watch, and assist if necessary. “She your girlfriend?” Negan prodded. Nothing.

“No, but you were fucking, huh.” No response again. Negan studied Daryl’s face. Daryl did everything he could to shut himself down, leave his body behind like a husk and take himself far away from here. These words were just words and they didn’t matter.

Suddenly, Negan raised his eyebrows and looked positively delighted, lightly slapping Daryl’s cheek several times to get the archer’s attention back.

“No, you two _weren’t_ fucking, were you? You fucking pussy, you got your dick in a twist over some old broad you never even stuck it in, and she’s over at the Kingdom crying about how she wants to die. I’m starting to wonder if that sad little cock of yours has ever even  _seen_ the inside of a pussy,” Negan brayed on but Daryl clung to the name the man’d had let slip like a life preserve. _The Kingdom_. That’s where Carol was. If she was still alive—if—he clamped down on the surging fear.

_“You’ve got to put it away,”_ a voice said and wildly Daryl looked around for where it’d come from. Negan failed to interpret the oddity of this movement, having at the same time just released Daryl and stepped back, giving the archer breathing room now that he felt he had his answers. He misinterpreted the distraught look on Daryl’s face as a success, when in reality it was a combination Daryl’s desire to reveal nothing to Negan battling with his desperation to see the source of that voice.

“I’ll make you the offer once again. You’ve got two fuckin’ options—you can help us—or you can die. There is no door number 3—these are the only two ways this can go.”

_“You’ve got to put it away. Daryl—you’ve got to,”_ the voice repeated, and Daryl realized with a crushing sense of disappointment that he couldn’t tell if it was really hers or his own, rattling around inside of his head. 

He stopped searching for her and turned his attention back to Negan, glaring back up at him defiantly through two black eyes, lip curled. He could see Dwight almost imperceptibly shaking his head ‘no’ at him from the back of the room. Negan himself shook his head, his disbelief at the archer’s stubbornness genuine, though he made it clear with his expression and tone he clearly thought this was a case of idiocy.

“Man, you really are fuckin’ stupid,” Negan drawled, and his earlier humor was gone. Irritation had crept into his voice, and he reached an empty hand behind him, palm up, into which an attentive Savior placed Lucille. He tapped her end against the concrete floor several times, pacing a step forward and back, giving away his growing impatience. 

Negan turned away for a moment, then whirled back around and slammed Lucille into Daryl. By virtue of his hands being bound before him, Daryl's arms took the brunt of the blow, though the force sent them thumping back into his chest and knocked the air out of him. Blood immediately trickled from the multitude of punctures the barbed wire had caused. 

Daryl coughed heavily, sucking wind, but as soon as he had his breath back he let out a few harsh barks of laughter. Negan was a fucking coward, an actor putting on a show but never delivering the finale, always delaying and delaying, and Daryl was going to call his bluff. Negan's expression shifted from surprised to angry, and he wound up, then brought Lucille down against Daryl’s right bicep and side, knocking him to the floor. Daryl didn’t have the strength to sit upright again, but he brought himself slowly off the floor and onto his elbows.

_No,_ Daryl told to the voice, _I won’t._ She’d left him here to deal with this on his own, so he was going to deal with it his way, not hers. And, there was a part of him, maybe not so small, that wondered if he got hurt badly enough if he'd find his way back to the Greene Farm, or wherever that place had been, and see her again.

“You’re the fucking pussy.” Daryl’s voice was low but clear, meant for the room. “You’ve been talking about killing me for weeks. But I’m still here.” He hacked, and then he spit onto Negan’s boots, sealing the deal. _No going back now,_ he told the voice with a tone of finality, and it didn’t respond.

Negan’s expression transformed from one of triumph to fury. Blood was seeping onto the floor faster now, making it slick, and as the seconds ticked by Daryl’s arms slipped out from under him, and he fell to his chest and stomach with a thump. Negan gently set Lucille down several feet out of Daryl’s reach. Then, slowly, Negan reached down to knot his fingers in Daryl’s hair, using his grip to lift the archer’s face and torso several inches off the ground, bending Daryl’s neck back at an awkward angle to look into his face. Negan’s expression was murderous.

“Oh, it won’t be today, and it might not be tomorrow," Negan said, his voice icy as he echoed Rick's words to him in the forest weeks before, "but I _will_ fuckin’ kill you." Negan leaned in closer, only inches from Daryl now, and his hot breath and split flecked onto Daryl’s face at his next words.

“But before I fuckin’ do, I’m going to find that bitch, whoever she is, and I’m going to fuckin’ take her apart. I’m going to do her piece by piece, and then I’ll cut her all the way from her geriatric fuckin’ pussy to her fuckin’ cunt mouth, and you’re going to fuckin’ watch. _Every. Last. Second._ ”

Daryl was breathing heavily, grunting with the exertion it took to not cry out at the tension pulling against his scalp. Despite how he tried to shut them out, the words and the images they created slithered in, worms that gnawed and burrowed their way under his skin, and as the snot and sweat dripped off the end of his chin, a single gasping breath wracked his body. 

He tried to get his arms under himself, but they were sliding, slipping on the blood-wet floor and Negan was holding him just high enough he couldn’t use his weight stabilize himself. Negan watched him squirm silently for several moments.

"Fucking pathetic," Negan growled, disgust dripping from every word, before his fist connected solidly with Daryl's face and the archer went down completely. A booted foot came down against his side several times for good measure and Daryl gasped into the damp floor, his lips creating a squelching sound as he desperately sucked for air against the wet concrete.

“Man, this is getting fuckin’ boring,” he heard Negan say from somewhere above and several paces away. “No more painkillers for the next while for this little shit, they’re makin’ this cocksucker think he’s got balls he doesn’t."

The footsteps receded, the lights went out, and the door swung heavily closed, leaving Daryl alone once more. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is super short! Thanks for reading, as always!

Honey started with his forearms, taking her cool, damp rag and slowly running it down one then the other, top-side first, then underside, squeezing the cloth to release some of the diluted iodine mixture before dipping it back into her bowl between each pass to refresh it. Daryl gritted his teeth with each stroke, exhaling between them to keep from making any other noise.

The sound of a zipper drew both of their attention to the back of the room, where the Savior on guard for Honey stood facing into the corner.

“No!” Honey snapped. 

“Hey, you, jackass, no!” she repeated to catch the man’s attention. The Savior looked back at her lazily over his shoulder and drawled, “Why not?”

“It smells bad enough in here already. You’ll go out and use the latrine,” she ordered, gesturing towards the door. He rolled his eyes at her and she slammed her rag down into the bowl, causing it to clatter and splash as it spun in a circle, as she howled, “GET OUT!” 

The Savior quickly closed his fly, muttering “crazy fucking bitch,” as he stomped towards the the door.

“I could kill you, right now,” Daryl told her, voice low, though his shoulders remained slack, his hands limp at his sides, until she picked one up to begin to wrap his arm in clean gauze. He glanced obviously towards the knife at her hip.

“You can hardly move,” she retorted, pointedly ignoring where his gaze was as she tied off one bandage and started on his other arm.

Daryl didn’t have a response—she was right. He was too exhausted to try anything. His body was overworked trying to continue with the bare minimum amount of functioning needed to keep him alive, and it was undersupplied with the fuel to do so. The food he got was the scraps from their army--stale butts of bread, the mostly-broth tail end of the stew, unidentifiable and undesirable bits of meat that made his stomach cramp. And he was so thirsty—always thirsty.

As if she read his mind, Honey replaced the rag to the bowl temporarily and brought her canteen gently to Daryl’s lips. He started to lift a hand to take it from her and hold it for himself.

“No,” she ordered gently, “I’ve got it.” He gulped down several mouthfuls of water before it started to run down his chin, and she recapped it and replaced it to the floor at her side.

“You need to listen now,” Honey spoke as the Savior’s footsteps faded away, her voice low and urgent even as she calmly continued to wind the clean white fabric around his arm. She expertly knotted it and looked directly into his face.

“Dwight— _my husband_ ,” she said, “—he is going to take Negan out.” Daryl started to scoff but the sharpness in her expression as she quickly raised her hand to silence him stopped him.

“Shut up,” she said brusquely. “We don’t have time for bullshit. We took your things that day in the burnt forest because we were running away—from here. They caught us, and as punishment, Negan held a hot iron to _my husband_ ’s face.” Her eyes flashed as Daryl opened his mouth again, and he shut it. “Negan—the women, if we aren’t good for fighting, then we become his wives. That’s how it is here. So when we ran away—he punished Dwight for stealing _me_.”

She paused briefly to catch her breath before hurrying on and Daryl started in. If she thought he had any pity reserved for her or the people here, he aimed to correct her on that. Anything they’d got, they deserved. “I don’t give two shits—“

“No!” she cut him off fiercely. “We’re going to make a deal with Rick, and with the other towns. We need to contact them, and we need to show them we’re for real. We just need time. We—“ Alarm flared across her face as she heard the footsteps returning, and she fell silent. Daryl stared at her, doubtful. This woman and Dwight had betrayed him once before and he saw little reason to trust her, and his expression made that plain. This sounded like a trap, though he was unsure of her motive for telling him. It was her turn to start to protest and his turn to cut her off.

“If I get out of here alive, I’m going to kill that motherfucker you call your husband,” he growled, his eyes narrowed. There was no question about the sincerity of his threat as they sat frozen in place staring at each other, and Honey’s eyes widened fearfully.

As the footsteps neared the open door, Honey reached a hand that had started to tremble towards his belly where the barbed wire had left dozens of pock marks and he brought a bandaged arm uncooperatively between them. He wanted her gone, now. “He’ll hurt me,” she ground out urgently and it was clear she meant Negan, “I need to clean that—“ Daryl met her objection with a whispered but forceful, “No!”

Aware that the guard had rejoined the room, Honey exclaimed, more loudly, “Come _on_ you asshole,” and slapped her hand palm down against the floor in real frustration. She felt the cold eyes behind her scrutinizing the situation.

“He giving you trouble?” the man asked after some consideration. Honey reached forward again, her hands stead now, and brushed the cloth against the wounds on Daryl’s stomach and side. Daryl’s eyes were fixed on her face, seeping hostility and burning into her, but he didn’t move this time.

“Some,” she replied off-handedly, making her last passes over the cluster of fresh punctures. She had no doubt he meant what he’d said—Daryl wouldn’t hesitate to butcher her husband, given the opportunity. And she wasn’t so sure he'd show her any mercy either.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, only a few days until the Season 7 premiere. I'm so scared for Daryl (and all of Team Family). On a different note, I promise I am going somewhere with this (I think, I hope), and this isn't all just gratuitous violence for fun, because it ain't fun! Feedback is welcome as always!

He silently tried to count the days he’d been here, anything take his mind away from what was happening, but he came up blank. With no windows in the cinderblock room he was held in, he had no light by which to measure the days he spent passing in and out of consciousness between beatings. He was sure he had been here at least two weeks now…or had it been three? He’d tried to hear the voice, the songs, to see her again, but like all his other friends, she’d left him to endure this endless torment alone. He blamed them less because he tried to reconcile his hurt with the fact that they truly could not be here, and even if they could, he sincerely would not want them to be, and he told himself they were going to get him out, though he wasn't sure he believed it. Her though, she had left him to suffer in the darkness by choice.

They seemed to have a never-ending pool from which they drew new ideas for ways to torture him and today was no different. A savior wearing heavy gloves reached into a bucket of hot coals to withdraw a rock, which he slipped into the door of a clothes iron, before latching it closed. Daryl struggled to not look at it.

“You’re going to agree to do some work for me,” Negan told him, grinning down at him malevolently. Daryl didn’t respond. He’d long since stopped verbally fighting Negan, though he now combatted him with silence, which he knew in vexed the man too—Daryl knew this because he paid for it.

“We’re picking up supplies from you’re pathetic fucking friends tomorrow, and you’re going to come along—as my body guard.” He’d hardly been listening at the beginning, but now, Daryl did raise his gaze to meet Negan’s. As ludicrous as the man’s statement had been, Daryl found himself filled with longing for the first time in days. Somehow, he’d fucking kill him. Having shut down every bit of emotion he could over the past weeks, this sudden burning desire was overwhelming, and Negan must have seen the change in his eyes.

“Oh ho now, I know what you’re thinking,” he laughed, “And you _will not_ fucking kill me. I’ve got some insurance against that.” He snapped his fingers, cueing the Savior by the solid steel door to rap the butt of his gun against it, and the door opened.

“I want to introduce you to my pet, boy,” Negan called back through the open doorway to someone beyond the threshold. “I’ve done some fuckin’ behavior modification, and I doubt you’ll recognize him. He’s a _brand new animal_ , if I do say so my-fucking-self.” Without even realizing it, Daryl hunched his shoulders and drew his knees in protectively, unsure of who this newcomer being addressed could be.

The person dragged in between the two Savior’s had their head down, but Daryl immediately recognized the long dark hair and smaller stature. He knew it was Carl before the teenager raised his head, revealing the scarred pink eye socket from which they’d removed his eye patch. Daryl stared, hard, but he didn’t say a word, and the boy struggled to meet his eyes.

“See, returning from our latest trip to Alexandria, we had a fuckin' stowaway! And as much as I have become fond of this little psycho, I will. Not. Hesitate. To bash his fucking head in if you don't cooperate.”

Carl’s blue eye finally found Daryl’s hard glare and the boy’s defiant expression cracked under the hostility that was radiating from the archer. The hatred that was rising up and spilling over was for Negan, but Daryl was furious too that Rick’s son had gotten himself into this situation.

“Go on,” Negan took a step back and waved between the two of them, “I know it’s been a while.”

Daryl seethed and stayed silent, and Carl fidgeted, unable to really break his gaze away even as he took in his friend’s wretched state. As Daryl felt the boy’s eyes move over him he became rigid, as if the tension spreading across his body and his iron expression could protect him from Carl taking in all the damage. Finally, Carl couldn’t bare it any longer. “Daryl, I—“

“No,” Daryl snarled. He didn’t want his pity. He didn’t need it. He’d been suffering here, alone, for weeks, without needing it. Some part of him had desperately hoped that enduring what he was would help keep his family safe, but that pathetic excuse had fallen apart. As long as Carl was here, he wasn’t safe, and neither was Alexandria, because Rick would do anything to protect his son. And so, it would turn out, would Daryl. And for that, he did feel something horrid crawling into his chest and up his throat like bile, this creeping rage that to protect this boy, his best friend's son, he would do whatever it was that Negan demanded of him.

“Get. Out,” he growled, his voice hoarse and guttural, a quality it had taken on as much from anger as how frequently he’d found himself screaming over these past days.

Negan guffawed, clapping his hands together and looking genuinely pleased with the situation. “Well, it appears this dog doesn’t miss his old family so much after all. Manners haven’t really been a focus of our training,” he said to Carl in faux apology, placing a hand firmly on Carl’s shoulder. Daryl’s burning gaze didn’t waver even as Carl cringed away from the larger man in disgust, though when Carl looked back to him again, trying to catch his eyes, Daryl resolutely shifted and stared at the floor, refusing to acknowledge him.

“Remember,” Negan ordered the Savior holding the hot iron, “I need his hands.”

Negan turned to address Daryl, who still refused to look up again; “I’m sorry this won’t have my personal touch, but with getting ready for our third pick up I’ve got a lot of work to do. And, I have a guest!” He could hear Negan thump Carl’s back heavily.  _Third_ , Daryl repeated to himself,  _third._ It had been three weeks.

“See you soon,” Negan finished when he received no acknowledgement, and then he guided the boy out of the room.

Daryl’s gaze moved to follow Negan’s retreating form only briefly before two saviors unbound his hands and dragged them out to rest palm down on the floor before him, both finally wrenching his arms into uncomfortable holds to subdue him. The first savior brought the iron down and held it against the back of one hand, and then the other, and nothing could stop Daryl from screaming—though the pain that rocketed through his arms as he involuntarily pulled away from the men kept him from tugging free, his mind couldn’t distinguish it from his blistering skin. The sizzling and popping as his flesh melted and the smell of it burning added to the nausea that already crashed through him in waves from the physical agony. He couldn’t stop it, he felt the tears force themselves from his eyes, cutting paths through the dirt on his bruised cheeks, and he cried, and he kept crying when the iron was pulled away, bits of his skin tearing with it, and he wasn’t sure there was much relief as the burning sensation continued.

And then they left, leaving Daryl to collapse onto his back, the coolness of the cement only contrasting with the fire raging on the backs of his hands and his fingers. He sniffed, and spit, and groaned, arms crossing his stomach to clutch at elbows, and he wished he would pass out, and then he heard her again. He couldn’t see her though, so he closed his eyes, and tried to picture a face alongside the voice.

“You’ve got to put it away,” she said, and she sounded sad. Lonely.

“I,” Daryl gasped, “can’t. I can’t.”

“You’ve got to,” she repeated, and Daryl grasped at the back’s of his eyelids for the shape of her face, the color of her eyes, trying to remember, and he couldn’t quite see it and this infuriated him more.

“You left me,” he howled in a low, wounded voice, and now he could see the faint outlines of her lips twitch into understanding smile. But it was a small one, tempered by suffering.

“Daryl,” she repeated firmly, the voice sounding so clear, as though she was right next to him, that his eyes flew open and he looked around wildly. In the dim light it was clear the room was empty but his heart continued to race. His head fell back to the floor with a thump that sent pain thundering through his skull and sparks rocketing across his vision.

The last time she spoke, she sounded far away, and he couldn’t bring himself to answer, because he knew both that she was right, and that she wasn’t really there.

“You’ve got to put it away.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify any confusing--after I wrote this chapter, I was bothered I hadn't given Daryl an escape attempt earlier, and I went back and added one (it is what is now 'chapter 5')--just to clarify for anyone who already read this far. Thanks!
> 
> PS. Sorry if this chapter was confusing--I'm following the comic book's plot, where Carl ends up at the Savior compound after sneaking onto a supply truck when the Saviors' do a pick-up from Alexandria. Negan actually admires Carl's brutality somewhat, though I can't say the feelings are mutual.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a baby chapter, this one!

Honey took his hands in hers one at a time, using her rag to clean the dried blood from his palms and knuckles. She moved slowly and carefully as for a few of his fingers just a firm touch was excruciating.

“Dwight is trying to end this. _We_ are trying to end this,” she reminded the wounded man before her. 

“Yeah, how’s that going so far?” Daryl snorted derisively, and Honey tugged the cloth over his last finger with significantly less care. Daryl grunted in pain.

“My _husband_ is risking his life to save your family,” she retorted, and Daryl snorted. Whatever reasons Dwight was supposedly doing this for, they certainly weren’t selfless.

From the corner, where he stood with his arms folded across his chest, Dwight scoffed. “Don’t waste your breath,” he advised Honey.

She paused, ignoring her husband and looking the archer in the face. “This is going to hurt,” she warned him with something strangely close to sympathy, and she lay the cloth softly against the huge, blistering burn on the back on one hand. Daryl sucked in hard, and gritted his teeth.

When Honey’d first arrived, she’d had to tell him it was the same day he’d received the burns to his hands, and he’d flushed red with a sense of shame that the torturous proceedings had driven him to deliriousness. But when Daryl had seen it was Dwight who was on guard for her, he’d quickly moved on, relentlessly demanding to know more about the Kingdom, and specifically, anything regarding Carol, but to no avail. Honey had little to share with him, other than that the Kingdom was a separate settlement that had come under Negan’s thumb like theirs and the Hilltop, and if Dwight knew more, he wasn’t sharing with a man who openly wanted him dead. Since accepting that he wasn’t going to get more out of them, Daryl had spent most of the time in sullen silence.

Honey lay the cloth against the back of his other hand for a moment, then clipped open two packets of wound dressings and lay them over the burns, before rolling gauze out to hold them in place. The next thing she pulled from her bag were several finger splits.

“I think you’re a bit late to set anything,” he protested as she took his hands again, but she shook her head.

“I’m not—I’m not _fixing_ them. But you’ll need to be able to hold a weapon tomorrow…” she trailed off.   
Tomorrow was the day of the third pick up, and the day Daryl would be playing lapdog to Negan in an effort to have Carl safely returned to his group. He clenched his jaw closed defiantly, the red creeping back up his neck and into his cheeks again, and he looked away. Honey didn’t say more, setting and taping the splints in silence.

“I asked Negan for something to brace your leg, but…” she trailed off once again, and Daryl refused to look at her, as if that would shut out the sympathy he heard in her voice. She sighed, and clapped her hands against her thighs. Then she reached for his bindings which lay untied on the floor, and refastened them around his wrists and his ankles.

“Well…” When he didn’t respond, Honey stood and picked up her bag. As she moved towards the door, Dwight turned on his heel and left without a word, but Honey stopped in the doorway to look back at the man sitting in the room.

“Good luck tomorrow,” she called softly, and then she left, closing and locking the door behind her, while Daryl’s eyes resolutely never moved from the wall.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, last night was horrible. I'm still not sure how to put into words my feelings on it--I'm not sure I even know what I'm feeling! It's made it hard to write but I'll try to keep this up, though I don't have a hard final number yet, I think with this chapter we're over the halfway point for this fic. Thanks for all the feedback and as always, for reading!

Daryl stared at the steel sheeting through the rain streaked window, his crossbow in his lap. He looked at what at one point he’d thought of as his home, and he felt an empty cavernous space inside of himself—and then, belatedly, he felt relief that hollowness was all he felt.

Through the spattered windshield, he saw the gate slowly open, and then—his family emerging. He felt rage and frustration flare up and lick his ribs—at being so close to them but unable to be with them, at them, for thinking they could let their guard down, have ever been truly safe, and at himself for thinking he could deserve that, that there could have been a place for him there. At the fact that this pathetic charade was all he could do protect them now.

“Daryl,” she said, and he could feel her wide blue eyes resting on him, the soft sadness from before now radiating from her, and he had to stoke the fire glowering inside of himself to try to keep it out. The Saviors had pumped him full of opiates, so that the full body's worth of pain would dull enough for him physically move, and then amphetamines, so that he’d have a mental capacity beyond lying on the ground like a human puddle, and whether or not it was really just the drugs running through him, he was seeing Beth in full now. Her blonde hair was in a pony tail, braid tucked behind her ear, wearing the green scrubs just like before, and she was sitting next to him in the back seat of this empty car like it made all the sense in the world. And he simultaneously hated her for finally choosing to fully be here now, and himself for refusing to look at her, when so many other times before he’d wished for this so badly.

“Carl?” he heard Rick’s muted voice asking. _No “Daryl?”_ he noted bitterly, chewing at his bottom lip.

“You’ve got to put it away,” she said, “please.” And her voice had taken on a pleading quality he hadn’t heard before, and he could hear also the tears that were brimming but not falling. She reached out and he felt a cool, light hand rest against the side of his face, smooth against the stubble on his cheek, and for a moment everything in him just wanted to close his eyes and lean into the first touch that was comforting, rather than bringing torment, in weeks.

“He’s here,” he heard Negan snap in return and his eyes remained open instead, “now hold your fucking horses.” Daryl detachedly watched the dreary forms of some of the Alexandrians beginning to load up supplies.

And then he gathered up all the self-hatred and rage that was boiling inside of him and pulled it closer, and the walls came up and he held them there. He shoved her hand away violently, flinging open the car door and crashing out, grabbing the frame just in time to keep himself from going down to the ground. She wanted him to put it away? He would.

_Stay who you are, not who you were,_ he remembered, and even in his memories, the words still came to him in her voice, though it was faded, muffled like it was coming through a blanket.  _No_ , he thought. Who he was got people killed,  _gets_ people killed. So instead h e’d take himself, everything that he’d become over the past few years, and he’d shove it down until there was nothing left but a shell, if it meant keeping them alive. Because he would do anything to keep his family alive. And he knew that’s not what she’d meant either when she told him _put it away_ , and he didn’t care.

With slightly more caution, he steadied himself against the side of the vehicle, slamming the door closed, and stood up on his own, adjusting his weight against the support of the leg brace he’d been fitted with for this performance. The leg brace Honey had requested the day before and been denied, but that Negan had realized was necessary when they'd tried to load Daryl into the car this morning and he couldn't walk. 

When Daryl finally looked back in the passenger window, regret a shadow flickering across his face, the car was empty.

He heard Negan whistle, which he supposed was his cue, and he methodically made his way past several SUVS to the front of the line up. He came forward with his crossbow knocked and loaded, as it had been in the car—Dwight had done it for him when they'd arrived to keep up the act he was expected to participate in, as there was no way Daryl would have been able to load it himself. He kept the bow raised before him—ready to fire, but also serving as a buffer between himself and his family’s surprised looks. Once at the front, he leaned back against the brush guard of the pickup truck, trying to subtlety recover from the exertion all of the movement had taken. He saw their eyes—Rick’s, Michonne's, Aaron’s, and others’—follow his movement carefully and he knew he hadn’t hidden his vulnerability.

Rick’s gaze scanned over his body, taking in the fresh cuts on his face, and heavy bandages around his hands, as well as his new clothes—black jeans, tattered button-down, and battered jacket. No longer the white jumpsuit. Making a split second decision, Rick moved forward, arm outstretched, and Daryl quickly swung the bow to aim directly at his best friend. Looking down the body of the bow, the weapon raised before him was a shield from the reality of what was happening, deflecting the hesitation, the pain, the anxiety, and allowing him to react and respond how he had to, to protect Carl. To protect _them_. His threatening movement and Negan’s sharp, “uh uh,” stopped Rick dead. Negan wagged a finger at the sheriff.

“I told you, I wanted you to meet _my_ new fuckin’ dog, not yours. Not anymore anyways,” he quipped with a smirk. “He was resistant at first but now…well, he’s come around to _my_ way of thinking.”

Daryl’s mind was swimming, battling the fog of the painkillers and the hyper-focus of the speed, and he found himself tuning out, as much to protect himself as anything else, scanning the less familiar faces in the crowd instead. As his eyes moved from face to face he saw confusion, surprise—and even disgust. He registered these systematically and moved on, not allowing himself to feel hurt in return.

“I told you, this is the New World,” Negan was telling Rick as the Alexandrians hurried back and forth, hurriedly loading supplies into the vehicles in an effort to end this encounter as fast as possible. Michonne stared hard at Daryl as she passed with an overloaded crate, but he resolutely ignored her. Daryl squinted through the rain, eyeing each person, his eyes stopping briefly on Spencer. The man was wearing a bulky coat, and each time he’d finished loading a box, his hand would go to his pockets and he’d fidget. _Don’t do anything,_ Daryl prayed, but outwardly, his expression didn’t change. He had little sentimental attachment to Deanna’s son, but the man was a part of their town, and the last living member of Alexandria’s origional leader’s family. Also, a foolish action on his part would jeopardize all of them.

Daryl turned his attention to Negan, and shifted his weight, and the end of his armed crossbow moved closer. He could do it, he could pull the trigger and without a doubt send a bolt through Negan’s head. Negan was blustering on, and as Daryl failed to drag his eyes away from the tempting option to kill the man, he felt the pounding of his heart as it struggled to beat its way out of his chest, and the blood begin to roar in his ears. If he did it, he knew there were Saviors just waiting for the opportunity to kill Carl where they sat with him in the car. Daryl’d almost certainly die as well, unable to knock and reload the bow as he was, or even hardly to move, but that thought had little affect on him. The opportunity was right there, screaming at him to come and get it, and he felt an ache in his chest that traveled down his arms into his hands to _do it_ and his finger twitched on the trigger. His eyes flicked back to Spencer, whom he saw had stopped loading things and was standing near the gate. As he watched, one of Spencer’s hands hand withdrew from his coat and came to rest on the front of his jacket, while the other fisted in his pocket—holding something. He saw the man glance around nervously. His mind raced, frantically fighting the fog that surrounded it to try to come to a decision.

Then he felt Negan’s eyes on him, even as he continued to waver, and whether it was real or drug-induced paranoia, Daryl suddenly thought, _He knows._ Maybe they _all_ knew, and this was some kind of a game and Daryl had never really had any choice in it. They’d slaughter his family.

He felt a chill greater than the rainwater trickle down his neck and he knew how the next sixty seconds would play out even before they happened, and so as they did everything felt bizarrely slow. Spencer took two steps forward but even as he was drawing the pistol from his pocket, Daryl was spinning to face him, the car behind him the only reason he didn’t lose his balance, and before the gun was in the air he’d loosed a bolt. The arrow erupted from the back of Spencer’s head and his body dropped before anyone else had even reacted, and then Rick was turning too and yelling, “No!” far too late, and the Saviors were raising their weapons.

Negan put his hands up and cleared his throat to forestall any shooting. “Hold the fuck on now, I think Daryl has resolved the problem. Rick didn’t know that little cunt was going to try that, isn’t that fucking right?”

“No,” Rick said, shaking his head, not looking at the corpse, his voice hoarse, “No, I didn’t know.”

“There,” Negan said, turning to his men, “See? Alright.” The men lowered their weapons. Daryl nearly dropped his bow, leaning heavily back against the hood of the truck now and sucking in air. When he looked up, Negan had come to stand right in front of him.

“Hey now,” the man said in a voice that was soft with artificial kindness, but still intended to carry to everyone else, “There’s a good boy. Here.” He reached out and took the crossbow and Daryl's shoulder's slumped in relief at the removal of both the physical weight and the expectation of further action on his part.

Setting it against the side of the vehicle for Dwight to retrieve, Negan reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and withdrew a pack of cigarettes, carefully opening the lid and holding it out. An offering. Daryl reached out, the bandages and splints making removing one a struggle, so that eventually Negan had to tap one loose for him. Daryl slowly brought it up and placed it in his lips, at which point Negan produced a lighter, and held that out in the space between them too. Daryl felt his skin prickle with the sensation that many eyes were now on them. 

Even after everything he’d be through, shame crept unbidden up his’s neck and cheeks. This, like everything Negan did, was a display of his power, an example of how thoroughly he dominated everything. A performance that said, you will obey, you will submit, and _everyone_ will know it. Daryl reached out to take the lighter but the material around his fingers was stiff and clumsy, and his hands had begun to shake, and he dropped it into the dirt. He froze--he couldn't bend to pick it up.

“Oh,” Negan said, making a sucking noise through his lips.  “That’s alright.” 

Negan stooped, picked it up, and held it out again. Daryl reached out, but this time, his hand was quivering so badly he was struggling to even line it up with Negan’s, and perhaps out of concern for their charade, Negan finally slapped the lighter into Daryl's hand. Daryl raised it to where the cigarette rested in his lips. He could feel his whole body vibrating against the truck, but whether it was fear, adrenaline, or the drugs, he didn’t know. His fumbled with the lighter, unable to fully depress the safety or spin the wheel enough to produce a flame. The seconds ticked by excruciatingly, occasionally punctuated softly by a _click. Click._

Finally, Negan, reached up sharply and Daryl visibly flinched away, causing Negan to pause with his hand raised, even as he grinned and shook his head. Instead of a blow, Negan took the lighter from him, flicked it once, and lit the end of the cigarette. He watched Daryl steadily as the archer closed his eyes and drew in deeply, turning to exhale smoke to the side. His eyes still closed, he wished he could be anywhere else, wished that by closing his eyes he could get back to that one place that had looked like the Greene farm, the people there, but all he saw were sparks of light and flashes of colored lines against the backs of his eyelids, and he heard the mud squelch as Negan shifted beside him. His eyes opened again, and he squinted into the rain, and tried to look at nothing. Daryl couldn’t disappear, but he could pull into himself so far it was like he was watching this from safely behind a window as this happened to someone else.

“Carry on!” Negan barked, waving at the people still watching to have them continue loading the cars. Nobody had moved to attend to Spencer, and Negan strode towards him, tearing the arrow free with a squelch. “And somebody get this stinking corpse out of here!” he shouted, before striding to the back of the line-up to investigate his supply count. At having been given permission, Aaron, Eugene, and several others moved forward to lift Spencer's body and carry him back through the gates.

Though Daryl could see Rick’s blurry form moving towards him, he kept his eyes focused on the cigarette burning between his fingers. The acrid smoke hitting his raw throat was its own twisted kind of relief and it was a kindness to look at something else than the members of his family. One Rick wasn’t going to allow for long though. He sucked in heavily, resigning himself to this interaction.

“Hey,” Rick said softly, and after a moment of silence in which they stood awkwardly across from each other, he reached out to lay a hand against the archer’s forearm. Daryl immediately pulled away.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he growled, meeting Rick’s eyes for the first time since they’d arrived.

“Okay,” Rick said, holding one hand up placatingly, “okay.” Daryl stared out at him through the greasy fringe of his bangs, the glowing cherry end of the cigarette the only light on his dark face.His eyes looked sunken, and black, and he felt Rick searching his face looking for something—maybe looking for him. He curled in on himself, hiding behind his stony, blank expression, but he couldn’t hide the trembling in his hands as he reached up to ash his cigarette. 

Rick dropped his voice, glancing towards the back of the vehicles to ensure Negan was out of earshot. “We’re going to get you out of there brother.” Daryl narrowed his eyes against the rain, watching his friend over the rapidly shrinking cigarette. “We’ve talked,” Rick said, his eyes flicking briefly to Dwight, then back to Daryl’s face, still determinedly seeking something. Daryl’s hands were shaking so badly now he could barely get the cigarette back to his mouth. “—we have a plan—“

Daryl cleared his throat and cut him off. “Don’t.” There was so much agony that bled into his voice with that one word that it said so much more. _Don’t promise what you can’t deliver on. Don’t try to give me_ hope. And worst of all; _don’t lie to me._ In what took long, drawn seconds, and concentrated effort to still his trembling some, Daryl brought the butt down against his jeans and stubbed it out, then dropped it. From down the line-up, Negan whistled again, and Daryl flinched.

“Load up,” Negan yelled to him.

Daryl looked up and finally met Rick’s eyes again. Let him see what there was to see. “Just don’t,” Daryl finished, and he turned and walked away. 

Daryl didn't look back until he was back in that back seat of the jeep, though this time alone, but once he was there his eyes never left the gate. Several minutes passed with Daryl watching intently through the window before he saw Dwight and another Savior leading Carl forward and shoving him into his father's arms. He watched Rick sob, and pull his son to his chest. Daryl let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and let his head fall back against the seat.


	11. Chapter 11

“I wanted you to know, you did a fan- _fucking_ -tastic job on that pick-up a few days ago,” Negan began. “Shooting that prick straight through the fuckin’ forehead? Fuckin’ _vicious_ ,” he crowed.

Daryl didn’t have a visible reaction to the topic, though thinking of the encounter he’d had with his family was painful. Indeed, it seemed like that was one of the only two emotions he could feel anymore, the other being fear. He didn’t know which of them was worse.

“Did you see the look on Rick’s fucking face? No, you probably had your eyes on that dead fuckin’ cunt, I suppose. Well, _let me tell you_ , it was fuckin’ _priceless_. And as a reward for your outstanding behavior, Rick got his son back.” Negan was nearly beaming with pride, likely with himself for having orchestrated the event.

His apparent enthusiasm only lasted another moment though before Negan clasped his hands tightly together as his face fell, and he turned towards the open door behind him and bellowed, “Bring me Lucille!”

When he turned back to squat down in front of Daryl, the cheer was gone from his voice, and his expression was somber. 

“However, I don’t want you gettin’ the fuckin’ idea that this makes up for all your previous shit. One good deed ain’t a fucking hall pass,” he continued, and though the grin returned it was all malice. Negan stood up, and reached a hand behind him, palm up, where the man who’d entered placed the bat. Daryl’s heart began to race, and his throat constricted—Lucille was covered in blood, and it looked fresh.

“While we’ve been busy here, I sent some of my men on a special fucking errand,” Negan said, “to check up on your girlfriend at the Kingdom. Carol, her name is—I mean, was?” 

Daryl immediately steeled himself against the implication, disbelieving—this was another trick, more theatrics, but as Negan continued cold dread crept into his belly anyway.

“See, I know you were weighing your options the other day at Alexandria, nearly fuckin’ shot _me_ instead of that pussy-ass cunt.” 

As Negan continued, he paced several strides back and forth. “Which means that some- _fuckin’_ -how, despite _all_ the fucking opportunities I’ve given you, you _still_ haven’t fuckin learned—and for that, there’s a price to be paid.”

Negan came to stand in front of Daryl, hefting the bat in his hand as his gaze ran down it appreciatively, pausing to savor this moment before he met Daryl’s eyes again.

“So my boys—they found your girl. And we did her up _real_ good.” Negan paused again, sucking in through his teeth with mock regret. 

“She was a pretty little thing, you _were_ right, I can see why you took to her. But you,” Negan drawled, coming to stop in front of Daryl, and bending down to stare right into the archer’s eyes as his voice lowered to a menacing whisper. “ _You_ are a fuckin’ _ugly_ son-of-a-bitch after what we’ve done to you.” 

He straightened, and raised his voice again. “We were worried the broad might not like you anymore, weren’t we boys?” The several men playing witness in the room laughed.

Something inside of Daryl cracked and he couldn’t hold it back anymore. He found himself staring up at the man, the panic plain to read on his face as he desperately searched Negan’s expression for anything that gave this away as a lie. Tremors ran down his shoulders and sides.

As Negan continued unaffected, the volume of his voice pitched higher, and he punctuated his words with swings of his baseball bat that audibly cut through the air. “So we took a little off _here_ —and _here,_ ” he yelled.With each mimed blow, Daryl’s whole body flinched away. 

“And here!” Negan bellowed, bringing the bat swinging down from overhead in the same manner he’d done when caving in the skulls of Daryl’s two friends that night almost a month ago, though he stopped about a foot short of it colliding with the concrete floor. This resulted in the bat stopping inches in front of Daryl’s face, and Negan held it there at his eye level, turning it slowly. Daryl involuntarily stared at it, eyes taking in the congealing blood it was coated in, and in the blood, several tufts of silver hair. He felt his heart climbing up his throat now and started to gag.

 Negan stood tall again, moving the bat away and handing it back to a waiting Savior, though Daryl’s eyes continued to follow it briefly before they returned to Negan. 

“Dwight!” Negan barked, backing towards the exit, “bring our gift in!” 

Dwight skulked in, holding a small bag that hung as though fairly empty, and handing it to Negan. “Thank you,” Negan said, and he came to stand in front of Daryl again. The archer’s eyes were back on Negan’s face, his breathing ragged, each one coming faster as though he couldn’t suck in enough air.

“Now, I’m sorry to say I don’t have a head to throw at your feet, but, well—“ Negan shrugged apologetically, acknowledging the obvious fact that there wouldn’t be one after Lucille did her work, as he reached into the bag. What he withdrew was a rosary, coated in blood and chunks of fleshy matter, and Daryl recognized it as the object Carol had frequently passed through her fingers those times she looked far away after the slaughterhouse. Negan threw it at Daryl’s knees, and Daryl, heedless of the gore that coated it, reached forward quickly and grabbed it, clutching it to his stomach. There were soft whimpers coming from somewhere and even when he realized it was him, he couldn’t stop them, snot dripping down his face and mixing with spit as he fought back tears.

“You look like you believe me now, but in case fuckin’ not—“ he gestured behind him and now Dwight and another man hauled in a larger plastic trash bag, and Negan stepped slightly aside and they dumped it at his feet. They were clothes—a complete outfit including socks, shoes, and jacket—and Daryl recognized them as Carol’s, but they were torn, and covered in blood and guts, and Daryl was crying now, and he didn’t bother to wipe any of it away.

"I did--" Daryl found himself saying in a small voice that wasn't his own, "I did what you wanted--" As if by pleading with Negan, with God, with _someone_ , he could undo what had already happened.

"No, you fucking  _did not!"_ Negan bellowed, fury twisting his features from their usual controlled confidence. "You _most certainly_ did not," he repeated more calmly, visibly reeling in his rage at what he'd perceived as Daryl's continued defiance.  Negan took a final deep breath to try to regain his composure.

“We stripped her down and left her corpse for the walkers,” Negan finished savagely.

The sobs that racked Daryl’s body were silent, but that didn’t seem to take any pleasure away from Negan as he watched the archer shake his head and look down at the rosary in his hands, then back at the clothes, his mouth remaining slightly open as he gasped for air, the tears continuing to brim and overflow from his squinting eyes.

Negan watched him smugly for a moment before brought his hands together with a sharp clap, and Daryl flinched involuntarily, eyes rising from the bloody heap to meet Negan’s wolfish grin. 

“Do you get it now?” Negan snarled at him.

Daryl’s continued to suck air in heavily as his eyes fell to the heap on the floor once more, his brain turning a single thought over and over, three words, _it ain't true_ , but Negan sharply brought him back with a roared, “ _Look at me_!”

 Daryl quickly raised his eyes to the man’s, though Negan's face was hard to focus on, blurry.

“Yeah, I think so,” Negan murmured, and he looked satisfied his message had sunk in. “Good," he added, before heading for the door. 

“Leave that bitch’s shit here,” Negan ordered on his way out, “let's give this dumb motherfucker some time to think on it.”

Once the door had closed and he was alone, Daryl pitched forward towards the pile, grasping at different garments—grey shirt, bulky brown coat—and pulling them against himself, uncaring as to the gore that was getting smeared across his chest, his pants, his face. Each breath in and out was accompanied by an audible sob now, and still he felt the harder he tried to breath, to cope, to _make it stop_ , the more his lungs burned for oxygen, the wider the hole ripping through his chest tore, the more he _couldn’t_. On his hands and knees, he let go of the clothes he’d pulled to himself and brought the rosary to his forehead, the slimy beads that fell on their string from his fist brushing his nose and leaving dark red trails. He closed his eyes, rocking forward and back in some instinctive but hopeless attempt to comfort himself, and the three word mantra in his head, _it ain't true, it ain't true, it ain't true,_ began to tumble aloud from his lips over and over as they moved against the beads. But Daryl didn’t believe in rosaries, in praying, or in God, and alone in the dark, he saw nothing.

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright y'all, I messed up a little. This idea for a chapter came to me right after I posted the most recent one with Honey, but really, logically, in should chronologically come before that, so I've moved it to here and the one with Honey is now Chapter 13. My apologies for the confusion, and also because I had this whole scene in my head but then when I went to write it, it was like pulling teeth.

Daryl lay still in the grass, the blades lightly tickling the backs of his arms and hands as they moved in the slight breeze. His head rested in the dip of her lap, pillowed by her legs that were crossed in front of her. The green scrubs were finally gone, replaced by jeans and a light yellow tank with a floral pattern. Daryl let his eyes drift lazily, unfocused, from the blue sky to the small purple flowers that danced over her shirt as the wind tugged at the light fabric.

 

_“Carol ain’t here.” It had been the first thing he’d said once they’d had a moment, more of a statement then a question. They had been standing on the porch, side by side, looking out, but as he’d spoken he’d turned to face her._

_“No,” Beth had told him softly._

_“Why?” Daryl asked._

_“I don’t know,” Beth told him, her eyes never wavering from his. Daryl didn’t feel the anger he’d expected to at that answer, instead accepting it as the sweet calm of this place continued to sweep over him. He turned away, his palms flat on the railing as he leaned against it, staring back out at the fields and the barn. That barn that shouldn’t have been there. Beth reached out and covered his larger hand with her own and they stood in silence as dusk fell._

 

Beth was running her hands through his hair, her touch light as her fingers worked to the ends before returning to skim over his scalp. She smiled down at him as he blinked lazily at the contact. This was closer to the Daryl she’d begun to see in the funeral home—only in the quiet moments, but still most definitely there. 

She’d come for him that day, the day he’d lost Carol. She’d sat with him as he fell to pieces that night, and when they came to hurt him the next morning, she’d brought him here. He spent his hours drifting between here and somewhere else, some place white and still, a place where he wasn’t sure he even existed. When he was here, she always was too—sometimes she wasn’t outside when he arrived, but she always knew, emerging from the house with the slap of the screen door behind her and a glowing smile on her face. He could hear his family inside still from time to time, though for the most part he’d obeyed her stern command that he was not to enter. Except for this morning.

 

_She had an arm wrapped around the post that ran from the porch to the ceiling and was smiling at him—a smile that had at one time lit something inside of him, sent sparks flickering through his stomach, but that now he struggled to return. Arriving here was like waking up—he couldn’t remember the coming or going, he was just suddenly here or he wasn’t. He covered the two steps to the foot of the stairs and looked up at her._

_There’d been the usual conversation drifting from behind the screen door into the house, but this time Daryl had heard a new though achingly familiar voice. A fist had wrapped around his heart and pulled him forward, swiftly up the stairs and around Beth, even as she began to protest. If he could see him, talk to him—it wouldn’t change what had happened, but somehow, it might make things better. Or maybe it would make them worse. But at least he would know._

_Beth had been faster though, clambering around him and pinning the door closed with her body, her small hand grasping his forearm that had reached for the handle with a surprising amount of pressure._

_“Why?” Daryl had demanded harshly, this moment the first time his temper had really flared since she’d rescued him. He was beginning to feel like a broken record._

_“Because,” Beth had said, and Daryl was surprised to see tears pricking her eyes, “you ain’t one of us. Yet.”_

_And then she’d taken his hand and led him to the field._

 

Daryl pulled idly at the grass between his fingers and narrowed his eyes, mulling something over. Beth gave him the time he needed to find the right words. 

“I can hear things, now,” he said, and though the meaning wasn’t clear to her yet, she was quiet, continuing to run her fingers over his head lightly—she knew he’d get there.

“The wind. Birds, the bugs. I couldn’t before.” Daryl wasn’t sure when it had happened—indeed, he had no comprehension of if he’d been here for hours or days—but it had suddenly struck him. The clicking, summery sound of grasshoppers playing their back legs together, the warbling of vireos, thrushes, and nuthatches, the rustling of the green leaves of the hardwoods.

“They were always there,” Beth replied, with a tone that almost, though playfully, seemed to say he ought to have known better, but her expression didn’t hold the jest for long as she looked over him, _away_ from him, a frown downturning the corners of her mouth.

“Hey,” he murmured gravelly, calling her attention back to the present, whatever that was. Sitting up as she was, he couldn’t make out her face, and he squinted up at her against the sun, the light haloing her blonde hair but leaving her face dark. His time here came and went like a dream, and Daryl suffered a nearly ever-present anxiety that if he lost sight of her she would vanish. As her blue eyes fell to meet his own and her face tilted slightly downward, he could make out her features once more, and when her gaze met his again her smile, though small, returned. Satisfied and also starting to flush slightly at her full attention, Daryl returned to watching the sky, mostly blue though a few small clouds were scattered about, braving the glare. Beth resumed the light play of her fingers along his scalp, and she could feel him relax again.

The breaths that passed in and out of his body were clear and deep, nothing like they were in the cell, and the sun was warm on his face, and he savored all of it. The fingers on his right hand twitched, and Beth watched him slowly bring it up to rest lightly on her knee, running small circles with his thumb, an action meant both to reassure himself and as a returned gesture of the affection she was showing him.

As her fingers wound down through a section of strands to briefly skim his neck, her smile quirked, suddenly mischievous. His hair had gotten so long. “You better watch out,” she teased him, the southern drawl growing heavier with anticipation at poking fun, “or soon I’ll be able to braid this.”

Daryl snorted. He brought his hand down to his mouth though, chewing at the knuckle of his thumb, looking like he was considering something, though Beth seriously doubted it was the promise of a hair styling.

Suddenly, there was a whooshing sensation that passed over him and something jerked at him horribly—it was _inside_ of him, like a hook in his ribs, and it hauled him downwards against the ground. Beth didn’t need to hear his grunt of distress to recognize it—she’d _felt_ it.

“Shhh,” she told him, stilling her hands on either side of his face. “Look at me—remember?” He did, his eyes taking hold of hers and not letting go. “Like we did before,” she said quietly.

 

_When she’d first saved him, he’d been being dragged forward in the cell, scrambling on his hands and knees over the concrete, and then as suddenly, he’d been under one of the large trees just in front of the farmhouse. The trees his family had pitched tents and ate meals and made their home under._

_He struggled to sit up onto his elbows but pain like fire rocketed through the extent of his body and he fell back to the dirt, convulsing._

_“Beth—“ he gasped, blinking back tears and searching futilely for her. He felt a smaller hand take his own firmly, the other coming to cradle his face._

_“I’m here,” she told him, and there was a steel in her voice he’d heard only a few times before._

_Her face came only briefly into focus, her blue eyes never leaving his as if by sheer force of will she could hold him here with her gaze._

_“It hurts—“ he ground out through a clenched jaw, and she clutched the hand she held tighter, her other gripping his chin so that he couldn’t look away from her._

_“I know—I know, Daryl—but you need to stay with me—” He let out a cry that tore into her core, closing his eyes and trying to turn his face into the grass, but she yanked his chin back forcefully._

_“Daryl, look at me!” She shouted at him, as if by being louder she could cross the gap that was opening between them to bring him back. Daryl blinked up at her as though he couldn’t really see her, reaching with out his free hand, and she released his face to grab it and bring it to rest over her heart._

_Daryl’s eyes closed, and when they opened, he was in the dim room again, and though his vision was blurred, he saw a pair of black boots pacing before him, and he heard muffled voices as two pairs of hands grabbed him under his arms and hauled him upright. The next time he blinked, he was back in the field, and he could feel Beth clutching at him, but she was a shape, out of focus._

_“Daryl, I’m right here--_ I'm right here _—“ she repeated. He could see her again and he stared up into her face, his eyes absorbing and committing to memory each feature, hanging on to every part of her for dear life. Her eyes gleamed with a fierceness that brought Daryl back to that morning in a different barn, far from here, as he’d passed Maggie the music box and told her that her sister was strong. Each ragged, heavy breath that he drew was accompanied by a grunt of pain but despite it, he felt the agony that had rocked through his bones beginning to fade._

_“I’m not leaving,” Beth said, and Daryl believed her. “And neither are you,” she’d told him confidently, “not yet.”_

 

This time was much gentler—having experience now with how to head this off, how to shield him, the pain never reached the crescendo it had the first time.

“I won’t let them take you back,” she whispered, and though he was still aware that something terrible was happening to him someplace else, it felt as though it was another person, another life, nothing more than a dull undercurrent that hummed faintly beneath his skin.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another swap-a-roo--moved my newest chapter, the Green farm (round 2), to Chapter 12 and this one to here. Sorry for any confusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, I just HAD to share these two articles about Daryl's mindset after the night in the woods according to Norman Reedus, and about Negan's reasoning for taking Daryl captive, according to Jeffery Dean-Morgan:
> 
> http://www.cinemablend.com/television/1577069/the-big-ways-the-walking-deads-daryl-will-change-after-the-premiere
> 
> https://www.cinemablend.com/television/1577649/why-negan-kidnapped-daryl-according-to-jeffrey-dean-morgan
> 
> So often I feel like articles about this show don't say much, but these two both had great little insights by the actors and really spoke to my line of thinking for this story, especially after the premiere, though perhaps I didn't write Daryl dark or broken enough! Can't wait to see where the show will go with him.
> 
> Honey's POV.

Today Honey was alone with him—a Savior had stood guard as she’d first worked, but Dwight had come to fetch him. The man had originally protested but Dwight had silenced him with a “she’ll be fine,” and a meaningful look Daryl did not comprehend had passed between him and Honey. 

Days had passed but the heap of ruined clothes were still in the room, though they’d been kicked to the side. Daryl didn’t look at them anymore, though he’d hidden the rosary in his jean’s pocket. Hidden, perhaps was not the right word, as nobody had bothered to try to take it back from him, but he wasn’t bold enough to wear it and tempt them either.

"You need to eat," she told him firmly as she worked. On the ground next to her was a plastic plate bearing an untouched sandwich--stale bread ends with something unnamable smeared between them. Not any worse than the rations he'd been given since arriving, but he'd stopped eating. This meal had been waiting, ignored, in his cell since yesterday.

She’d already covered his body and was wiping blood from his face, and as the grime was cleaned away her rag revealed fresh abrasions and bruises from the past week. Daryl stared past her, his eyes vacant. Indeed, Honey felt she was working to clean up a body rather than a man—though it was warm and breathing, there was nobody home anymore. She’d stitched up three lacerations, two over his ribs and one on his arm, with little more of a reaction then tiny involuntary flinches of his skin.

"Are you with Beth?" she asked more gently, recalling the name from the first day she'd tended to him. No reaction, not even a hitch in his breath, to the a name that had provoked him to attack her the first time she'd uttered it.

This being that was more of a human casing that an actual person fit what she’d heard from Dwight, who’d been present for more than half of the more recent “sessions.” Daryl responded to nothing, not shouting, not beatings, not threats of more dead family member’s belongings being delivered to his cell. It wasn’t simply apathy—they hit him with fists, with belts, with bars, and his body, still responding to some sense of duty, would flinch, but that was it. His breathing only changed if the blow was to an area like his chest that forced it to. They still had his body imprisoned, but Daryl himself had gone somewhere far away, some place that no one here could touch him anymore.

This had left Negan in a foul mood, and as briefly as his pleasure came these days from a full supply delivery, a good meal, or a romp with one of his many wives, it was gone, replaced by irritability, or a worse, senseless fury. 

Negan had initially been pleased, the first time he’d discovered the new state of his captive, his lust for complete control seemingly sated—it had taken over a month, but he’d finally succeeded. However, as the days dragged on, the flaws in this victory became apparent, and impossible to ignore, as even his underlings were discussing it around the meal-time tables. Negan didn’t have an obedient servant—he had a living corpse. 

Though Daryl no longer sought to disobey him, he also no longer sought to do anything else—and by the very act of doing nothing, he still defied Negan. If Negan had been growing bored of the beatings before, now they held no joy for him, and he’d found himself in a place where no amount of cruelty brought him pleasre, and all the work he’d put into breaking this man over the past month seemed to be a waste. He'd managed to beat a man to death without physically killing him--this was a problem Negan had never faced before, and he was uncomprehending as to how to solve it. Evidence of his frustration was apparent on Honey, who sported the blues and purples of one of his rages in the form of a fading but still blackened eye.

Honey reached up and cupped a hand to Daryl’s cheek, tilting his face to look directly into it. His eyes were empty and dark, and even though they were looking at hers, she didn’t think he could see her. She found this new creature intriguing, a strange sense of awe regarding him floating in her chest and squeezing around the kinder parts of her heart, but he also presented for herself and Dwight a very serious problem.

“Daryl. Please. You’ve got to hang in here. _Please,_ ” she begged, and though she had developed this underlying current of concern for him, perhaps out of a twisted sense of responsibility for him, she was pleading with him for her life, and for Dwight’s. They needed him alive as part of their bargain with Rick and the other settlements. 

He was still not really seeing her, looking at and through her like she wasn’t there, and the absence in his eyes sent a cold creeping across her neck and backs of her arms, like she was walking through a curtain of thick, icy fog, its damp droplets condensing on her skin and seeping through her clothes.

Honey took a deep breath, and searched his eyes for something, trying to push back the veil and find any hint that he was still in there, but all she could see was gray and out of reach.

“Whatever he’s done to you, there’s always more,” she whispered. This time, she was begging for his sake too.

She leaned in closer, until their faces were inches apart, and nothing changed. He didn’t pull away, he didn’t tense up at the threat of physical contact, no matter how benign, as he would have before, he just. Kept. Breathing. Her eyes traveled from his over each part of his ruined face, over the bruises that pooled across his cheekbones to his ears, down the crooked bridge of his nose and then the scar that traveled towards the line of his jaw through his ragged beard, along lips that had cracked and bled and stopped moving, before dropping to his chin, where under the gray and brown hair there were traces of yellow and green beneath his skin. Her hand still in place, cradling one side of his face, she leaned up and placed her lips to his forehead softly, closing her eyes briefly and inhaling as she did so.

When she settled back on her heels, she peered into his eyes once more. The change was almost imperceptible, the stirring of a memory, and for the briefest of moments, he was there. He blinked once at her, spooked, and looked out at her as though he was watching her from inside of a cage. 

"Daryl," Honey said, looking equally surprised that she'd found him, and at the same time trying to reach out and grasp him, keep him from slipping away, but even as she did so, she could feel him sliding through her fingers, no more tangible than smoke. Once more, she was kneeling before only a body.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, holy shit guys, totally unrelated, but if you haven't seen the 2015 film Sky (which just happens to star Norman Reedus), it's on Netflix and you should. I won't say it's a great movie per say, but I am a sucker for indie character studies that make you sad (and you all must be suckers for being made sad too, I'm guessing, because you're reading this). Also, it is a foreign film (French) set in the US, which if you live here is just an interesting perspective.
> 
> Okay, onward with the story!
> 
> Dwight's POV-ish (once we're at the Sanctuary).

_They were sitting on the porch again, but this time he sat on the steps and she was in the hanging chair. She pushed against the floor boards lightly with her feet, causing the swing to rock and its metal fasteners to squeak._

_“Stop,” Daryl muttered. He couldn’t voice to her the reason why—that all too often in the last days he’d seen her, Carol had sat on a similar swing, the chains that it hung from creaking in dissatisfaction as she burned down cigarette after cigarette—but Beth listened, and the noise ceased. Hearing her sigh deeply, he turned to look at her._

_“You can’t stay here,” she said. Her body had stiffened, and for a moment she couldn't look at him. Once she did again, he saw that her eyes were shimmering._

_“Why?” Daryl asked, alarm rising in his voice at her distress as well as the prospect of returning to that room. But even as he fought it he could feel this world, this place Beth had brought him to, or maybe this place he’d created for himself, already slipping away._

_"You have to go back," she whispered as though he hadn't spoken._

_Daryl hadn't moved, had sought to remain calm by staying still, even as that stillness came from a rigidity that seized his entire body as his heart thundered against his ribs. His eyes found hers desperately, his lower lip in his teeth. "Please, don't," he said roughly, his voice low, hardly more than a murmur. Even as fear made him plead with her, she saw the resignation slipping across his face as it sunk like a stone into his belly, and the way he looked at her felt like a knife twisting in her chest, but she pushed on._

_“You have to go back,” she said again, and the tears were falling now, “or they’re going to kill you.”_

 

…

 

Several men stood around in the same room as Daryl, smoking cigars and drinking from a variety of containers—a jug of wine for one, a bottle of whisky for another—their laughter coming easier and louder with the addition of alcohol. Daryl sat unmoving in the corner farthest from them, one leg resting on the floor, the other knee drawn up in front of him, propping up one arm that partially hid his face as he hung his head, his eyes closed. The Saviors paid Daryl no mind, save for one—Dwight kept glancing over from time to time, and of all the men, he was the only one who looked periodically anxious, who couldn’t stop fidgeting.

Finally, one of the other Savior’s, a big-bellied man in the jean jacket, took notice.

“What’s the matter Dwight, worried about your boyfriend?” he jeered. Dwight scowled at him, and the man scoffed in return, tapping ash from his cigar. “Negan’s thinking of killing him and being done with it,” he continued.

“Can’t say I blame him,” another, a tall, lanky man with a distinctive shock of red hair that he kept covered with a cap and a darker red mustache. _Tony_. He gestured lazily with one arm towards the shadowy man in the corner; “He’s a useless fuckin’ bore.”

Dwight sucked heavily in on his own cigarette, before blowing a cloud of smoke into the faces of the other two, rolling his shoulders in the black leather of his vest, and feeling the embroidered angel wings on his back ripple. “It’s not smart,” Dwight said gruffly, “He’s part of the deal with Rick’s group.”

The big bellied man spat on the floor and sneered. “Man, you really are a fuckin’ faggot, ain’t you,” he said, jabbing a thick finger into Dwight’s chest. “Worrying about that sack of shit over there, and now you’re on a first name basis with that asshole and his friends who killed twenty of ours? Asshole,” he finished.

It was Dwight’s turn to spit on the floor, but other than that he didn’t reply, looking away instead. 

When he heard laughing, he turned back to see that Tony had crossed the room and was now standing directly in front of Daryl, who had not moved. The archer’s hair fell almost to the tip of his nose, hiding his eyes, which was just as well with Dwight, as the last time he’d actually seen them he’d found the utter emptiness unnerving. Tony lightly slapped their captive’s face several times tauntingly, then held his bottle of whiskey out towards Daryl, wiggling the end of it around under the archer’s misaligned nose.

“Come on man, with the month you’ve had, I know you want some,” the redhead taunted. He took another drag on his cigarette before leaning down to put it out on the back of Daryl’s hand. The only sign the archer felt anything was the twitch of his fingers when it made contact, and then he was still again. Tony turned back to the group, grinning and holding up both hands, and the fat man laughed in encouragement.

“See, what did I tell you? Fucking braindead boring,” Tony said, turning back to face his captive again. This time, he jammed the bottle against Daryl’s mouth roughly, the crack as it collided with the archer’s teeth audible across the room, and then he tilted the end of it up. Daryl swallowed twice before the amber liquid began to spill down his chin.

“Hey man, why you fuckin’ wastin’ that shit on that asshole,” the fat man demanded, and briefly, Tony looked over towards him, lowering the bottle slightly. In that instant, Daryl’s hands snaked out, grasping the bottle by the neck, and cracking it against the wall beside him. Even as Tony’s head just began to swivel back as his brain registered the noise, the jagged end of the broken glass was cutting into his neck. Blood exploded from his throat, soaking Daryl and the floor around him, but for Tony, other than a short, single choking noise, it was over, and his corpse crumbled forward. The archer stood unsteadily, bracing against the wall to do so, a combination of his weakened state and the loose binding around his ankles.

The fat man roared, taking several steps towards Daryl, who crouched and brought his arms and his weapon up in front of him, before the room froze at the sound of a hammer cocking. “Nobody move,” Dwight ordered, and his gun arm wavered between the two, as though unsure of who was more of a threat to whom.

Daryl took two half-steps forward, then almost fell towards the Savior, who reached for the large hunting knife at his belt. Though he was a larger man then the archer, the bottle stabbing into his gut caused him to crumple forward, and as they both went to the floor, Daryl managed to crawl on top of him.

“Stop!” Dwight shouted, moving closer, circling partway around the two, but still not shooting.

The Savior on the ground sunk his knife into Daryl’s side even as Daryl firmly planted the broken end of bottle against his throat, and the howl that ripped from the archer's throat was a combination of rage and the pain the effort caused him. Slowly but steadily Daryl pushed the glass down and through the man’s flesh with what remained of his rapidly fading strength. The Savior gurgled, bringing his large hands up to beat about the archer’s face, but it was too late, and they quickly flopped back to the floor as he went still. Daryl rolled off him and lay on his back on the floor, panting heavily.

“Jesus Christ,” swore Dwight, running both his hands through his hair, turning away and then back to Daryl. “I’m trying to get you out of here, man—I’m trying,” he inhaled sharply, trying to regain his composure. “I’m trying to end this.”

“Then end it,” Daryl growled. But then his voice took on a softer quality as he lay still on the floor, except for the heaving of his chest. 

“Just fucking kill me,” he whispered, and Dwight understood that he was begging.

“That’s not—that’s not the deal,” Dwight muttered, pacing back and forth. “Shit!” He again brought his hands to his face, along with the gun, before resuming aiming it at Daryl. It was unnecessary though, as the other man could hardly lift his head off the floor. Dwight peered at the archer’s side, where the knife handle protruded, but recognized that the weapon was also stopping Daryl from bleeding more profusely. Dwight stepped down, hard, on both of Daryl’s wrists to pin them, removed the bottle from the archer’s hands. Unsheathing his own knife, he quickly sunk it once into the temple of each dead man before he exited the room, slamming the door behind him.

For several minutes Daryl lay completely still aside from his great rasping breaths, trying to gather what remained of his willpower and the feeble scraps of strength he still had. With a guttural scream that was both from physical pain and exertion, Daryl curled his legs up towards his chest and reached his bound hands to his side, grasping the knife handle. It took several tries grunting tries, each failed attempt resulting in a rending noise part greif and part agony, before Daryl pulled it clear and let it clatter to the floor. A warmth began to spread heavily from his side, flowing across his belly and down his legs. A numbness took him, tingling from his hands and feet up his limbs, and as he slowly lay back on the floor, relief washed over him that finally,  _finally_ , he might be able to stop fighting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, it's not over yet!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not super happy with this but I've been messing with it a few days, so I'm just giving up and posting it. I think the awesome weirdness of that second episode has just thrown me off haha.

Each breath was a struggle, a wheezing draw and rasping exhale that bellowed the fire burning in his ribs. And yet, against his wishes, his lungs kept working--Honey had seen to that. For all that had changed since he’d arrived here, he found himself in a familiar physical position—propped against the wall, elbows on knees raised slightly before him. Negan cuffed him roughly once, twice, then grasped him tightly by the throat, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. Daryl struggled under his grip, and Negan could feel the archer’s neck flexing under his hand, trying to suck in air. He finally released him, pausing before running his fingers with a sickening gentleness over the archer’s face. A satisfied smile briefly crept onto Negan’s face as he admired his handiwork, weeks of scars and bruises layered upon each other from the day of Daryl's arrival until as recently as the day previous. Negan had been displeased that the archer had mentally vacated the premises and he'd taken it out on the only thing he'd had left; Daryl's body. Daryl felt his stomach turn over as nausea churned in his gut at the light stroke of Negan's fingers, and he gagged.

 

_“I need more bandages!” Honey shouted, but rather than leaving the room to attend to her request, Dwight stalked along the back wall. From Honey’s hands to her elbows was a coating of deep, sticky red, and she felt it seeping through the knees of her pants from the pool she was kneeling in._

_“Dwight, help me!” she howled, feeling the wet, warm liquid leaking through the last layer of gauze padding that she held over the wound on Daryl’s side. One of her hands lay over the other, pressing down firmly, but it wasn’t enough._

_“We’re going to die because of him!” Dwight snarled, flinging a hand in the direction of the archer, who lay prone on the floor, except for his shallow, wheezing breaths._

_Daryl, for his part, while still vaguely aware of the room he was in, couldn’t fully grasp the events that were unfolding, and found himself drifting, unable to pin down what was real, even as he blinked hazily at the woman kneeling over him._

“You could have died because of him!” Daryl _heard himself saying, and shadowy memories of a sky-rise hallway, and a boy, hardly a man—Noah—pinned beneath a bookshelf as a walker reached, growling, through the cracked doorway. Carol, injured—her collarbone displaced and already spawning blues and purples._ Carol.

_“No, we’re not,” Honey said, turning her upper body to face her husband, though her hands never left the archer’s side. “Dwight, please,” she gasped in between between the sobs she struggled to control as panic began to grip her and she fought it back. They weren’t going to die because Daryl wasn’t going to die. She wanted to_ live _, and she wasn’t going to let Daryl take that away from her._

_“Please, go get more dressings,” she said, her voice regaining a composure she didn’t feel. “And an IV bag—we need to start fluids.”_

_She’d used all of the resources she had at her disposal already, but Dwight could get more from the Sanctuary’s doctor—that man would listen to Dwight, not to her. Perhaps he could even convince the doctor to come, though without Negan’s direct order she found this unlikely. It was even more unlikely that Negan would give his approval, but the man wasn’t on the compound right now, which gave them the opportunity to do this, and suffer the consequences later._

_Dwight was nodding now, as much to her as to himself. “Okay,” he said, “okay.” He turned on his heel and took off._

_She turned her full focus back to her patient. He was pale, much like the night he first arrived, and his breathing was rapid and light, but he was_ still _breathing. And though unfocused, his eyes continued to open again after each blink. “You’re going to make it,” she told him, and there was a firmness in her voice—this was a command, not a tearful request. She was staring so intently at his face that she jumped when she felt his hand clumsily come to rest against her bicep, leaving a dark red trail down her skin as it slipped to a rest on her forearm._

_Daryl squinted up at the dark form over him, looking at the results of his movement, the smear of blood that his palm had left behind. His lips moved, speaking, even as he heard the words in_ her _voice, the voice from that office they’d stood in together looking at that bullshit that had passed for art, and as they slurred from his tongue his mouth quirked up on the edges._

_“You don’t know me.”_

_Honey started at the hint of a smile, at the fact that this face she’d only seen scowl, rage, and cry, could even do that._

_“Hey,” she said softly, her hands still planted firmly on his side, and his face twitched, and she knew he’d heard her, “you’re still here. You’re still here.”_

 

“Welcome back,” Negan said coldly, his smile gone, appraising the man he saw staring back out at him from under a fringe of bangs. “Did you have a nice fuckin’ vacation, wherever the hell you went in that fucked up head of yours?” 

He paused for a response though it was evident he wouldn’t get one. Negan sighed in mock remorse.

“I should punish you for what you did,” Negan began, but he looked distracted from this point, almost contemplative. Negan squatted down before him, grasping Daryl’s chin in his fingers, and tilting it up to look into his face. “But what good would that do? Fucking nothing,” he spat, the whole thing a statement rather than a question. He exhaled and shook his head.

“I’m disappointed with you; I heard from _him_ —“ Negan raised his voice and jabbed a finger in the air towards Dwight where he skulked by the door, “that you asked to fuckin’ _die.”_ Negan paused dramatically to take a deep breath, playing as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying. 

“You asked to die,” Negan repeated, disgust seeping into his voice, “like a little _bitch_.”

Daryl struggled to meet his eyes, swallowing thickly and finally working up to it. The two men studied each other. Negan shook his head again, still not releasing his grip.

“Say it,” he told the archer softly, but though Daryl shifted under his glare, he said nothing.

“Say it!” Negan repeated sharply, violently wrenching the archer’s jaw and neck.

“I wanted to die,” Daryl ground out, his voice harsh.

Negan stood and turned to appraise the effect he was having on his small audience—Simon, standing in waiting towards the door, chuckled, but Dwight had turned away, one hand brought up to his face.

“Dwight!” Negan snarled, and Dwight looked up, immediately moving the hand that had hovered near his mouth up his head to run through his hair. Negan gestured down towards Daryl, who had his eyes downcast submissively to the floor.

“You’ll fuckin’ watch this you little cunt,” Negan ordered, and Dwight replied with a cowed, “Yes, sir,” and turned to square his body towards the scene once more, as did Negan.

“Say it again,” Negan ordered, his focus returned to the archer as his hand snaked out to grasp Daryl’s chin once again.

Daryl cringed though then he pushed on, his voice firmer but still cracking. “I wanted to die,” he repeated.

Negan clucked in disapproval. “Like a bitch,” he prompted.  
  
Daryl found himself struggling to speak, beginning to start several times with parted lips and an intake of breath only to find that the words didn’t come. 

Negan swiftly delivered a backhanded blow across Daryl’s face, and the impact knocked the wind out of him and made his ears ring. It took several moments of gasping for air, each breath a horrible, desperate, throaty noise as he struggled to breathe. Once he’d quieted down, he licked his lips and tried again.

“Like a bitch,” Daryl finally repeated softly.

“Good,” Negan said, grinning wolfishly as he released Daryl’s jaw and briefly sat back.

“We can arrange that,” he told the archer, and something that was as close as someone like Negan could get to genuine regret seemed to pass over him, before his expression hardened and he leaned back in towards Daryl, their faces only inches apart.

As the moments ticked on, Negan continued to loom over the archer. Everything about the way he held himself was predatory, and he studied his prey carefully. Daryl could hardly look at him anymore, not since he’d brought the archer a trash bag full of that broad’s things and proclaimed her dead, and this observation allowed Negan to glean a small jolt of pleasure from a situation he’d otherwise come to be quite infuriated by.

Negan raised his hand sharply and Daryl instinctively jerked away so forcefully he cracked his head against the cinderblocks behind him, but the actual blow from Negan never fell.

Instead, Negan laughed at this ingrained response on Daryl’s part, feeling some remnants of amusement, though mostly the sound was cold and empty. He had unarguably had an effect on the man but it hadn’t been to the end he’d desired, and so instead of a surge of pleasure at what should have been a victory, to Negan this moment was only becoming another monument to a failure, like a sly bitterness creeping into the corners of his mouth when he’d expected the bite to be sweet.

The problem with Daryl was that the man was a fucking rubix cube—every time Negan had turned a row and thought he was getting closer to pulling him down, he’d simultaneously managed to lock some part of Daryl farther inside, farther away. Negan reveled in mental carnage and while he’d managed plenty of that, he’d ended up with a broken, mulish sort of beast, not an obedient servant. The only thing left to do was to kill him, and though kill him he intended to, there was no real victory in that.

“It’s a shame Honey even saved you,” Negan said off-handedly. “A waste of precious fuckin’ resources, if you ask me—but then, she _didn’t._ ” There was something dangerous in the way he said that, and from the corner of his eyes, Daryl saw Dwight hunker down at them. “Would’ve been better to just let you go, put you out of your misery,” Negan continued, bringing a finger up to tap at his lips thoughtfully, “But, that bitch has learned her fuckin’ lesson, I made _damn_ sure of that.” From the back wall, Dwight was glowering, though he tried miserably to contain himself.

At these words, Daryl finally dared to look up at him again, though it was a sideways look, as though he couldn’t face him straight on. Negan patted him on the shoulder.

“That’ll do,” Negan finished, standing up, and ushering his witnesses out. As he reached the exit, he turned off the lights before turning back, a black shadow silhouetted by the yellow light from the hall. “I’ll see you later,” he called back, then shrugged his shoulders, “or maybe I won’t.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, I'm so sorry for the slow update guys, things got hectic and then I was out of town at Standing Rock in ND. Those last two updates...ep. 3 was hard but ep. 4? My heart was just breaking every time we saw Daryl. As always, thanks for sticking with me and reading, comments and critiques loved and appreciated!

Alone in the dark, he not only lost any remains of his ability to measure time, but he struggled to even differentiate between waking and sleeping. Everything was dark, and empty, and in both, he was alone. Beth was gone, as was the farm, and in the beginning, he hardly dreamed.

At some point, he discovered that someone slipped in while he was asleep and left him a bowl of water, waking to a clatter and a dampness soaking through his left sock.

_In the pitch black he gingerly pulled his knees under himself and crawled a few feet forward, stopping when he felt it bump his bent fingers. Though there was a thirst burning in his throat like a grass fire, he stopped himself after only two deep drinks, sitting back on his knees. He carefully reached forward with his free hand and dipped two fingers into the bowl to try to gauge how much water remained. Removing his fingers, he hesitated only a moment before he quickly brought them to his mouth and sucked the moisture clean. When he finished, he left the bowl in its place, sitting back down and pushing with the heels of his feet to scoot back across the concrete until his back rested against the wall again._

As he waited in the constant darkness, his only indicator that time was in fact even passing, and that he wasn’t just trapped in some bodiless hell, was varying the degrees of dryness of his mouth and the slowly lowering level of water in that bowl—and the only thing that stopped him from becoming obsessive in his measuring of it was fear of wasting any.

Hunger roiled his gut and he thought on the meals he’d passed up the days prior and longingly imagined them now, though that train of thought didn’t last long as it wasn’t particularly useful. There wasn’t much useful to think on, but thinking was all he had to do, and he spent a lot of time revisiting the murders of Abraham and Glenn, in some part to avoid thinking about what had happened to Carol, watching and re-watching the images of the bat splitting their heads apart one after the other. He considered the fact that Glenn would still be alive if it weren’t for him—for him storming out of Alexandria, hell bent on avenging Denise, yet another person who would be alive if it wasn’t for him, and for him taking that swing at Negan. He felt that ache grow in his chest, the one he hadn’t thought could get any bigger, and everything in him wanted to tell his friend sorry, to beg and plead sorry. And Maggie—maybe it was best he never left this place alive, because he could never face her.

_ At one point he made the excruciatingly slow journey to the door, shuffling on his hands and knees, and tried the light switch. Nothing. He looked at the door handle for several minutes without trying it, certain it would be locked still but unable to pull his gaze away. Finally, he grasped at it, feeling nothing when it caught and confirmed that he was still trapped, and then when he had the strength, he returned to the far corner. _

With no light and the cinderblock muting any outside sounds, Daryl’s only company was the rough noises of his own breathing.

_Eventually, the sound began to sound to him like an echo, reverberating nauseatingly in his ears, and panic wrapped a fist around his lungs. In a miserable effort to calm himself, he brought his hands to his face, but even inches away he couldn’t see them. The darkness pressed in around him, laying heavily against his eyes and face like a blanket, and between it and the stillness he felt like he was suffocating. His chest rose and fell faster and as he gasped for air, the horrible noise only became louder and more rapid, and he knew it was coming from himself, but he couldn’t make it stop. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his palms into his face, bit down on his lip, and willed himself to bring his breathing back under control, to slow it down. Gradually, it did._

Like the measuring of the water bowl, these panic attacks became a regular, though unscheduled, ritual; anxiety tightening his chest, the struggle to breathe slowly versus to get enough air, and then he’d fight it back down.

As he drifted in the dark, the sense of hunger settled down permanently in his gut and his stomach’s grumbling stopped—presumably, the organ recognized the futility of hoping and accepted its fate.

“Sophia,” he would sometimes murmur to himself, “Hershel. Beth. Denise. Glenn…Carol.” As he struggled down the list of names the tears would threaten and that pain, so undeniably physical, would build inside of him, and he’d grip his arms or legs with fists so tight they bruised, or bite down his knuckles until they bled, anything to help keep himself from breaking apart. To finish reminding himself of everyone he couldn’t save. Everyone he’d failed. And though part of him longed to lay out on the floor, sob into the dirt and concrete, and through his tears, and snot, and spit, to beg them for their forgiveness, the other part wouldn’t allow it. 

This other part knew that pleading with the dead would do nothing, but its reasons for not allowing it were something else—he didn’t _deserve_ to be forgiven. He _deserved_ to feel the weight of his mistakes and to carry them with him for the rest of his days, as numbered as they might be. This part of him also was why he held his sorrow in and internalized it. Daryl fought to keep it all in, to not let even a drop of it out, instead collecting it all in his arms and molding it into the bricks he was stacking into the walls of the prison cell he was building for himself.

 

...

 

At some point, he became aware of a warmth that had crept from his core into his head, onto his cheeks, and he realized belatedly he had a fever, not a surprising fact given the physical state of his body and the lack of care.

It wasn’t until the fire had grown, burning just under his skin, his clothes damp with sweat, that the images came to him. He had his eyes closed, and all over his body was trembling violently, and though he’d drawn his knees to himself and wrapped his arms around them, there was nothing else he could do.

He couldn't be sure whether he was asleep or conscious, but streams of memories of what was and what had never happened played through his mind. The fields in front of the prison. Holding Judith. Beth's hand in his outside of the funeral home. Maggie's quiet acceptance, that day in the soft light of the barn they'd sheltered in. Rick, grinning in the car as he put a CD in despite Daryl's objections. The look Carol had given him that day on the steps in Alexandria after they'd brought her back. Glenn, standing in the woods, pleading with him to come home. A girl with a mop of blonde hair, five or six years old--Judith, Daryl realized--helping her dad shuck peas on the porch. Rick smiling at her as she sat beside him. Carol joining them, and then she was smiling too, and the light of it reached her eyes in a way he wasn't sure he'd seen before, and it made his heart clench. Maggie, sitting on a blanket in the sun. Glenn beside her, holding their son, who was making an effort to stand with the help of his father. He felt someone come to stand beside him and when he glanced to his right, there was Beth, and she turned from happily watching their family to beam at him.

A soft touch on his arm brought him back to the darkness, and he swung wildly, grasping for the person, only to find that no one was there.

“Come back,” he whispered, hardly recognizing the harsh croak of his voice as himself. 

“Come back,” he said again, his voice louder though still hoarse, desperation causing it to crack. The room remained unchanged, his eyes as good as blind in the complete darkness. His hands fisted the material of his pants, twisting it tighter and tighter between his fingers as he struggled to fight down the panic in his chest, even as his body continued to shudder. That same taught sensation as the other times crept into him, seeping through his ribs, a pressure around his lungs that made him unable to inhale fully, and he gasped for air as though he was drowning. Each breath grew louder then the last, a horrible throaty sucking sound that he could barely hear over the blood roaring in his ears, and he blinked rapidly into the blackness as tears pricked his eyes.

Alone. Alone, alone, alone. The word echoed in his head, and his fingers freed themselves of his pants, scrabbling desperately over the floor, digging at nothing, and the fear was an animal clawing its way out of his chest and up his throat, and he let it consume him. When he finally had the oxygen, there was another terrible noise, and it was coming from his mouth, and he couldn’t stop it, these screams of rage and terror, and despite his bonds he clawed at himself and kicked his feet, thrashing like a dog in a steel jaw trap until he was too exhausted to move anymore.

 

…

 

Daryl woke, if that’s what it was, to find he was sprawled on his belly, knees tucked into his chest, arms laid out before him, his lips raw from being rubbed into the concrete, something sticky and sickly sweet on his mouth and under his nose, and a bitterness on the back of his tongue worse than any morning after he’d experienced.

He pushed himself unsteadily onto his elbows, briefly registering the vomit before him—more bile than anything else—before sitting his weight onto his knees and gingerly feeling for the only resource he had left, alarm rising in him as that pads of his fingers brushed the smooth bottom of the bowl. It had been overturned, and he felt a surge of loathing for himself for having caused this, though it was only another wave in an entire ocean of hatred. 

Bringing his weight back to both his legs and arms, he army crawled his body the short distance to where it had spilled, bringing his mouth down to the still barely damp ground, and sucking at it futilely. On his lips he felt the faintest traces of moisture, but after a moment of feeling nothing on his tongue but dust, he gave up. He rolled himself onto his back and brought his hands up to wipe the thick sludgy vomit from his face, and took a heavy breath. Then he let himself cry, unguarded this time, tears carving unseeable tracks through the grime on his face, down over the fading yellows and greens of the bruises on his cheeks to splash cooly onto his neck, bringing his bound hands to rest against the knobbed bridge of his nose. 

He had no more walls to build, nothing left to give or to lose, and in the immeasurable, unending darkness, he now knew he would die as he’d lived so much of his life—alone.

 

…

 

When they finally came, it was almost too late to save what was left. As the door to the cell swung open, they brought their hands to their mouths, gasping and retching at the stench, the overwhelming mixture of the smells of sweat, blood, piss, and shit, hitting them like a physical wall. The light from the hallway illuminated them but cast in a straight beam to the rear corner straight ahead of them.

Jesus groped for the light switch on his right but the room stayed dark. Aaron brought a flashlight to bear in front of them, casting it along the back wall, and when it shone directly on the pile in the corner, the pile revealed itself to be more than rags, and more than a walker, by clawing at its face and screaming in agony. Aaron quickly pointed the light towards the ceiling, turning to see Jesus offering him a bandana, which he draped over the lens of the light to dim its beam, though he was still careful not to point it directly at the man in the corner again.

“Holy shit,” Aaron mumbled, quickly crossing the room, though Jesus matched his stride, and as the Alexandrian rested his hands on his bent knees before Daryl, seeking to find his friend’s gaze even as the archer kept his face pitched forward, Jesus had dropped to a knee and deftly cut the bonds on Daryl’s wrists and ankles. Still, the archers hands didn’t drop from where they rested inches in front of his face. When they’d entered the room, Aaron had not immediately recognized his friend, but once he did, the realization that this in fact was Daryl was heartbreaking for him.

“Daryl,” Aaron murmured, in a tone not unlike the one he’d addressed the horse they’d tried and failed to catch together. “We’re here to get you out.” This time when Jesus reached for one of Daryl’s arms, he yanked violently away, his fingers clutching together as he brought his hands tightly to his chest.

“It’s me, it’s Aaron,” he repeated, his confidence slipping. “And Jesus,” he added, gesturing at the long-haired man next to him, even as Daryl drew his knees up. Though he could hardly see them between the fringe of greasy bangs and the archer’s squinting at the dim light, Aaron tried to get the green eyes warily peering out at him to meet his own. They wouldn’t. 

“We’re here to help you,” Aaron tried again.

It was no good. When they’d finally both reached for him after exchanging looks, he fought back with a strength that in his weakened state he could only have summoned through sheer terror. Not once did Daryl try to land a blow on his rescuers, though several times his hands and feet did connect as he thrashed wildly in his all-consuming drive to get escape their grasp. Jesus and Aaron were not weak men, but it was taking more than they had to try to hold Daryl down as he struggled violently to get free, to get _away_ from their hands, though all his forceful attempts to pull away only brought him more tightly against the wall.

From down the hallway, the sound of gunfire ripping through the air, and Aaron, turning back to Daryl and seeing the wild panic on the man’s face, realized that if there’d ever been a chance they’d have been able to calm the archer, it was gone.

With a look of remorse towards them both, Jesus brought the hilt of his knife down against Daryl’s head, rendering him unconscious, and as he shouldered a portion of Daryl’s weight, grunting with effort, Aaron swung towards the door, gun already drawn, ready for whatever would come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I forgot anyone in Daryl's guilt list, let me know so I can feel guilty about it too, haha. Two or three more chapters left in this fic, I'm thinking.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took a while! When I started this, I'd already written a bunch of the chapters--now I'm doing them as I go, so it's taking longer. Also it's harder for me to write other characters then Daryl and for some reason the show coming out each week is killing my drive to write this. :( Don't worry though, even if I'm slow, I'm gonna finish it.

Rick climbed out of the driver’s seat of the SUV he’d parked inside the gates of the Hilltop and ran a hand through his hair. The dark circles under his eyes had only grown darker—he hadn’t slept much in the past weeks, and not at all in the past twenty-four hours. The raid on the Saviors’ compound had begun in the dark hours of the early morning, but finishing it had been a process that had taken the rest of the day. With Negan taken care of and the last of the stragglers discovered and picked off, Rick had finally felt he could leave the Sanctuary in the hands of Michonne and Dwight—a man who, despite Rick’s initial apprehension, had turned out to be their ace in the hole. Despite what he would have thought months before, after what they’d accomplished together Rick trusted Dwight as much as he’d trust anyone at Alexandria—though he still didn’t like him.

 

_“Jesus and Aaron found him,” Michonne told him when they’d crossed paths in the main courtyard, seeing and reading his stricken face for what it was—he’d had no word on Daryl. As much as he’d wanted to be looking for his friend, his skills had been needed leading the assault. Early on, Dwight had given them instructions on the location within the Sanctuary where Daryl was being held—Rick had demanded it, as a condition of their agreement--and he'd let the people sweeping that block know where to look. “He’s in rough shape, but he's alive,” she told him hoarsely, her eyes glittering as they met his own._

_Rick let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, the relief crashing over him like a wave, and he had to stoop and put his hands on his knees. Michonne leaned in, resting her forehead briefly against his. “He’s alive,” she repeated, and now she was smiling, though it was small._  
_  
After a moment, Rick regained his composure and straightened. “He’s at the Hilltop,” Michonne told him. “Go see him—we’ll finish dividing up the supplies. We’ve got it.” Still reeling with the revelation that his brother had made it, Rick nodded and hurriedly made for the entrance, finding a ride to the Hilltop with several of its residents and a car full of goods._

 

As Rick strode towards the medical trailer, he tried to temper his eagerness with a distanced acceptance for what might await him. His friend was alive, but they hadn’t seen him in weeks, not since he’d shot Spencer—and Daryl hadn’t been in good shape then. Though Rick had never seen anything remotely like this situation before the turn, as a cop, he’d had training related to missing children, and how a kidnapping situation could affect their psyche. Still, as the reservations grew in his head, Rick tried to push them away, battling between being prepared and not assuming the worst.

Shouting from the very building he was walking towards tore him from his thoughts, and alarm rising, Rick sprinted towards the trailer. As he covered the final few yards and leapt up the stairs, the commotion became distinct noises--wordless yells, wheels scraping, metal furniture colliding, and then something crashing to the floor and the clatter of instruments across the linoleum.

As Rick crossed the threshold, his mind worked in overtime to process the scene. A rolling bed—likely the one his friend was just recently resting in—had been knocked away from where Daryl stood panting, and there was a metal stand lying on the ground, which was wet from an IV bag that has burst. Daryl himself, clad in only an open-backed smock and a pair of thin cotton scrub pants that hung loosely from his gaunt frame, stood against the back wall, his shoulders up defensively, his breaths coming in ragged gasps—and the archer had one taught arm across a large orderly’s chest, pulling the man tight to himself, and the other holding a scalpel to the man’s throat. Rick took in the way Daryl was looking at him--like he didn’t know him--and he knew it was lucky the orderly is still alive.

“He fucking stabbed me!” a second man, one Rick recognized again from his first visit—one of the guards, Kal—exclaimed. Kal was standing off to Rick’s right, staring disbelievingly at an IV needle, a small circle of blood staining the thigh of his pants.

Rick quickly dismissed the outburst for a meaningless distraction and turned his full attention back to the two men in front of him. The orderly’s eyes were wide with terror, but to his credit, he neither spoke nor moved. Rick could see the pressure with which Daryl was holding the scalpel to his captive’s throat by the way the skin of the beefy man’s neck was indented under the blade. Any harder and it’d cut through—and Rick had no doubts about Daryl’s ability to quickly deliver a fatal blow from this position. He’s seen his brother slit more than one throat. 

After a moment, Rick noticed the steady quiver of Daryl's knife hand, and from there his eyes dropped to the arm Daryl was restraining the orderly with, to discover that it too was trembling. Daryl, following his gaze, tightened the fingers of that hand into his captive's scrubs, and the movement stopped. When Rick returned his focus to his friend's gaze, Daryl was staring, hard, back at him, his eyes narrowed, almost as if challenging Rick to say something about it, but as soon as their eyes met, the archer dropped his to the ground.

“Daryl,” he said, and Daryl looked up from the floor once more, and Rick saw recognition flicker through his friend’s features, though the archer’s breathing didn’t steady or slow. Still, that was good. “Daryl,” Rick repeated, “It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re at the Hilltop.”  Rick watched his friend’s face intently to see if the information was sinking in, but if Daryl had been hard to read before, his face now was like an iron curtain between the world and what he’s was thinking.

“You’re safe,” Rick repeated again. “Jesus and Aaron—they got you out. They brought you here.”

He'd lost him though--Daryl's wasn't listening. Instead, the archer's eyes were darting around the room, looking for an escape route, and Rick saw the fingers on his knife hand tighten.

“Daryl!” Rick said sharply, alarmed, and the archer flinched and looked down, and the orderly grunted as the motion caused the scalpel to nick his throat. A small trickle of blood emerged from under Daryl’s fist and trickled down his captive’s neck, into the collar of his shirt. “Daryl,” Rick repeated, careful to do so more gently and quietly, “Look at me. Please.” Daryl’s gaze left the floor and returned to him, and through the archer’s fringe of greasy hair, Rick could finally see him, _really_ see him, looking back.

“ _Please,”_ Rick repeated softly, pleading with his friend. “Don’t do this.”

Daryl’s shoulders remained high, and rigid, and his posture didn’t lose any stiffness either. But slowly, he lowered the scalpel, and as Daryl's hand neared his waist, Rick saw his fingers loosen. The orderly took the opportunity to quickly step away to the side. So intent was his focus on Daryl that Rick didn’t see Kal moving until it was too late to stop him. Apparently Daryl, his eyes on Rick, searching for some semblance of reassurance, didn’t see him either.

“No!” Rick yelled, but the guard was already deftly twisting Daryl’s wrist, and the bloody scalpel clattered to the floor. And then Daryl was fighting back, and he was  _screaming_ , but it was too late, and the orderly was helping, and in about twenty seconds Kal and the orderly had gotten Daryl's arms wrenched up painfully behind his back and his body pinned down over the bed he’d kicked away, and from where his face has been smashed down into the thin mattress pad, Daryl watched Rick with a look that was so wounded it was a solid punch to the sheriff’s gut. The noises coming out of Daryl’s mouth as he fought to breath, the painful grunts as the air hissed through his teeth, his torment as much at the humiliation and trauma of being subjected to this kind of restraint yet again as it was from the physical pain, felt like a fist wrapping around Rick’s heart and trying to tear it from his chest.

“No!” He shouted again, but this wasn’t his home, and Daryl could have killed a man, and though his hand went to the butt of his pistol, Rick didn't draw his gun and he didn’t cross the room to stop them as they fashioned a makeshift bond from a piece of fabric, which they tightly fastened around Daryl's wrists. Though Daryl was still struggling, all it looked like now was a injured glare and these faint twitches because the two men still had about half their body weight each on top of him, holding him down as they finished.

“You got him?” the orderly asked and Kal nodded and wrapped a fist in Daryl’s hair and pulled, even as he pushed the archer's face down, and Daryl whined and tears pricked his eyes, and he was _still_  looking at Rick, and now even as the tears brimmed in the sheriff's own eyes, he did begin to draw his pistol, but then he saw the reason for the force as the orderly released Daryl. The orderly then grabbed a vial of something clear and popped the cap off a needle with his teeth and drew it into the syringe, and by then Daryl was trembling all over as the orderly returned to his side and stuck it into his upper leg, which was the closest thing the archer had left to any meaty flesh. 

When Daryl did go still, and his eyes crashed closed, the two men kept him from going down completely, instead guiding him forward onto the bed, cutting the bond on his wrists, and rolling him onto his back, though they proceed to procure zip ties and fasten both his wrists and ankles to the rails.

Still, all Rick could see was the moment before his friend went out, Daryl's eyes wide and wild, and the way the archer had looked at him again—like he didn’t know him at all.

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, got this one up faster than I was expecting.
> 
> First off, apologies for anything I'm medically botching, I did a nominal amount of research but otherwise I'm winging it. Happy to make corrections if you notice something really horribly unrealistic/wrong.
> 
> On another note, you might notice, I finally have a total number of chapters--24! This is subject to change, but based on some outlines I wrote for the remaining chapters, it is my guess. Thanks as always for reading!

Rick didn’t leave his side.

The first thing he’d demanded was to know how long Daryl would be out for, to which he got a shrug and ‘could be several hours’ as a reply. When he demanded to know where Harlan was, the orderly rounded on him with enough indignation and fury that Rick was actually cowed—Harlan, the orderly informed him, had been up all night triaging the worst off of the patients, and had finally, at their insistence and with the knowledge that everyone was stabilized, gone to sleep for a few hours. With things significantly quieter now then they had been on his arrival, Rick had taken in the other patient sleeping in the far corner, and the wastebaskets full of bloody bandages, IV bags, and needles.

For a long while, as Rick sat in the plastic chair he’d pulled up to Daryl’s bedside, he simply studied his friend with an intensity he had not been able to spare during their initial encounter. He spent the longest amount of time on Daryl's face, taking in how it had changed. There were deep red scabs littered about, the remnants of healing abrasions, and the bruising had mostly faded to sickly tinges of yellows and greens, some of which trailed down his neck in the unmistakable shape of fingerprints—though there did remain some purple that had yet to drain from around one eye socket. Probably broken, Rick noted. 

But while those things were temporary, there had been more permanent alterations. Several scars, the skin whole but still marked as fresh by their pink color, crossed his face, the most severe of which was nearly a centimeter wide, beginning on his cheek and making its way down along his jaw. His nose now had a distinct knob about a third of the way down the bridge, and was markedly crooked, the lack of swelling indicating that this had happened early on. 

The collar of Daryl’s cotton scrub stopped Rick’s eyes from prying further, and was perhaps a blessing, sparing Rick from pouring over the multitude of injuries he was sure he would find on his friend’s chest and abdomen, so his gaze next moved to Daryl’s arms. Another wide, long scar, like the one on his cheek but larger, ran down the majority of one bicep, but it was the slew of smaller, puckered pock-marks that littered his other arm from shoulder to forearm that Rick couldn’t look away from. He _knew_ what that was from—barbed wire.   

Rick had begun to tremble violently, but he couldn’t look away. Wouldn’t let himself. As his eyes came to rest on the archer’s hands, he took in the twisted, shiny masses that were the backs of them, where Daryl's skin had literally been melted and then left to ooze and heal, and Rick swallowed, and continued down. Rick’s stomach churned when he saw that nearly every one of Daryl’s fingers had been set with a splint, though he was silently thankful that this had been done while the archer was asleep.

And then, there was that cheerful mint green fabric again, and then, Daryl’s feet, ankles bound to the rails with zip-ties, looking dirty but otherwise wholly fine. Something about this struck Rick as oddly humorous, but he couldn’t find it in him to proffer even the hint of a smile, the fury roiling through him far overtaking anything else he felt. If Negan hadn't already been dead, looking at the evidence of what the sadist had done to his brother, Rick would have killed him a hundred times over.

 “You should get some rest,” the orderly told him, and Rick stared back at him uncomprehending.“You look exhausted,” the man tried again, gesturing generally at Rick’s face, and Rick could see himself as the other man did, dark circles under his eyes, several days of graying stubble on his chin. Rick shook his head. 

“I don’t want the first face he sees to be a stranger's. I’m not leaving him alone again,” Rick replied firmly. The orderly gave him a funny look before he turned away, returning to doing the rounds on another unconscious patient, and dimly, Rick registered a dampness on his face, and he realized he was crying.

 

…

 

Rick didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep, but he was woken by a hand gently shaking his shoulder, and he started and sat bolt upright. He must have looked alarmed, because Harlan smiled warmly at him, though while it was genuine Rick couldn’t miss the sheer exhaustion in the man’s eyes. Harlan glanced around, apparently determining that there were no other available chairs, and sitting himself down on a nearby metal table instead.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Harlan told him, “I needed to catch up a bit on sleep.” Rick, for all his impatience for answers, was grateful for the work the doctor had done treating the wounded from the assault on the Sanctuary, and he nodded in understanding. 

Harlan looked at him appraisingly, as if trying to gauge what to say, and how much of it, and Rick quickly ducked his chin and shook his head, before meeting the doctor’s gaze steadily. “I want to know,” Rick said, “I want to know.”

“Okay,” Harlan said, and his smile was gone now, fully replaced by the weariness Rick had seen before. The doctor raised a hand, beginning to gesture towards the door, indicating they should get some privacy.

“No,” Rick said, shaking his head, “I’m not leaving him.” _Again_ , was the way he silently finished that sentence. He would not allow it to happen that he wasn’t here when his brother woke up.

Harlan glanced over at the orderly, who was sorting through medical supplies and simply shrugged at them before returning to his work.

“There are the things I can tell you with certainty—his eye-socket, as you may have guessed, is fractured. His fourth, fifth, seventh, and eight ribs are fractured. As I’m sure you saw, seven of his fingers were broken, and the majority had started to heal incorrectly aligned—we were able to reset those while he was unconscious. We’ve started antibiotics, and he’ll need to stay on those for a few weeks. All of these things will heal, given time, though he may have some stiffness and limited mobility in his fingers.” 

Harlan sighed, and Rick felt his gut twist in nervous anticipation of what might come next, given the man’s apparent distress.

 “At some point early on, they fractured his femur. He’s lucky to be alive.” Harlan looked directly at Rick now, knowing with even his minimal first responder training as a cop prior to the turn, Rick would understand the severity of this, the high-risk of an injury like this, untreated, severing an artery. “It’s begun healing already, and its twisted. He’s going to need assistance to walk, and he’ll probably be in chronic pain.”

Even as these things hit him as though he was colliding with a brick wall, Rick couldn’t batter down the surge of hope. There weren’t a lot of ways that the archer was like his brother Merle, but one of the few was that Daryl was a tough son-of-a-bitch if Rick had ever met one. The fact that Daryl was _alive_ was all the chance they needed.

“The hard part is the things I _can’t_ tell you with confidence—he’s suffered a pretty major head injury. Several of them, most likely—” Harlan continued, but Rick was shaking his head, starting to speak up. Harland didn’t _know_ Daryl.

“He’ll be okay—“ Rick started, and he felt as though he’d betrayed Daryl when he found his voice quavering, hated himself when he recognized the way his voice sounded, lacking confidence and uninspiring, the way he’d sounded when deferring to Negan.

Harlan held up a hand, and Rick fell silent.

“I can’t tell you exactly how he'll be affected. The effects of head trauma can vary a lot from patient to patient.” 

Harlan paused, but as the silence dragged on, Rick pushed the subject.

“What are possibilities?” Rick asked, afraid of the answer but unwilling to not ask the question.

Harlan held up his hands helplessly. “You could have anything from impaired motor skills, difficulty concentrating, difficulty understanding or processing situations, impulsivity, to irritability and aggression, persistent repetition of words or actions, memory loss or inability to form new memories…” Harlan was winding down, but it was Rick's turn to hold up a hand to stop him anyways. Harlan pinched the bridge of his nose, glancing down at the floor before forcing Rick to meet his gaze again.

“And frankly, Rick, I would be surprised if we don’t see symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The man looks like he’s been dragged through hell and back, and knowing what I do about Negan, I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.”

Harlan didn’t have to list symptoms of PTSD. Rick knew, from his time on the force. _Nightmares, flashbacks, severe anxiety. Mistrust, emotional detachment, insomnia. Hostility, hyper-vigilance, self-destructive behavior._ He recited the features of post traumatic stress disorder in his head like he was reading them from the pages of a book.  

Harlan could tell he’d lost Rick to thought, and he paused, leaning forward to place a hand on Rick’s shoulder. 

 “Only time is going to tell, Rick. Which is why, I want to keep him here for a while, as well as to monitor his physical injuries—“

Rick's entire body tensed as everything in him screamed out ‘ _no’_ with an intensity and fury the sheriff thought he’d been drained of during the long fight at the compound. He pulled away from the doctor’s hand, intended to comfort, and sat rigidly upright. He wouldn’t leave Daryl here, Daryl wouldn’t get better here—Rick needed to bring him _home_. As he opened his mouth to speak, Harlan seemed to read his mind, and cut him off with a medical practitioner’s authority.

“Two weeks, Rick. If all goes well,” he added sternly, making it clear that his was the final word. 

“He may be the same man you knew, Rick, and he may not be,” Harlan told him softly. “Your people—your _family_ —“ the doctor stressed, and Rick had to close his eyes and wince at this blow, “—might not be safe around him.” When Rick opened his eyes again, the doctor was there, waiting for him, his eyes knowing, and it was clear he was referencing Daryl’s brief hostage-taking of the orderly.

As Rick visibly deflated back into his chair, Harlan’s gaze softened, and his expression wasn't just sympathetic anymore--the doctor looked genuinely saddened by the situation.  

Harlan sighed again. “And this is, really, what is best for him—that we monitor him, and adjust accordingly. You don’t have a doctor in Alexandria, if something were to go wrong,” Harlan said, and on this, Harlan had him. It seemed cruel that after so long away from his family, Daryl should have to spend more time among strangers, but Rick knew the doctor was right, and his shoulders slumped in defeat. Daryl would stay, then--but so would he. And it wouldn’t be just him—Maggie and Sasha were here too. Both had come by before his arrival to see Daryl, the orderly had informed him earlier, but Daryl had still been unconscious.

“Two weeks,” Rick replied, after a moment.

“If all goes well,” Harlan reminded him, but Rick wasn’t listening. He’d make sure everything did, and as soon as Harlan gave the approval, he was taking Daryl home.

Because Harlan was _wrong_. Rick knew Daryl had suffered terribly at the hands of Negan and his men, but there was nothing, _nothing_ , that their family would not do to bring Daryl back.


	19. Chapter 19

Rick, even as he tried not to admit it, was afraid of what would happen when his friend woke up. That Daryl would panic, would thrash wildly about the bed until the zip-ties cut into the skin of his wrists and ankles. That he’d scream profanities at Rick for having left him at the mercy of the Saviors for long. That he’d look at Rick like Rick was a stranger, as he had before the orderly and Kal had taken him out. That Daryl would fight until the orderly or Harlan had to knock him back out.

As it turned out, his fears were unnecessary. Rick was staring at Daryl when the man’s eyes opened, but he’d been doing this for hours, and it took a couple seconds for him to register what was actually happening.

Daryl sat up slightly and blinked cooly at him, once, twice. The wildness from before was nowhere to be found on his face. Instead he looked calm, collected—though when he looked behind that, Rick saw the hurt and betrayal from before still lingering.

“Hey,” Rick tried to speak, but his throat was scratchy and the worlds caught, and he had to clear his throat and try again. “Daryl, hey.” Rick couldn’t help it—he smiled.

Daryl didn’t smile back, though he did incline his head slightly in acknowledgement. Still, at the same time, Rick saw him test the bindings on his limbs, confirm that they were there—it was the slightest movement, but he’d done it.

Rick looked apologetic. “Those are just—“

“So I don’t hurt somebody,” Daryl finished, and his voice was harsh, and gravelly from disuse. 

“We can cut them off,” Rick said. Daryl didn’t reply, simply leaning back down against the bed into the slightly propped-up position it held him in, and staring back at Rick, his expression impassive, before averting his eyes. Rick had spent so much time with the archer—years now—that he’d learned to read what his friend was saying, even when he didn’t speak. Right now, it was a defensive, _‘are you sure? Can you_ trust _me?’_

Could he trust him? His gut instinct had served him well many times before, and Rick went with it. Plus, it would take a display of trust to earn reciprocal trust. He drew the knife from his belt and cut first the bonds on Daryl’s ankles, then his wrists, ignoring the involuntary tension this caused in Daryl, whether it was the proximity of the blade or Rick’s hand. He sat back, and re-sheathed his knife. Throughout this, Daryl didn’t look at him. The silence went on, and it felt strained.

“Harlan says you’re doing alright,” Rick tried. “You’ve got a lot of recovering to do, and they’re going to be able to help you best here.”

Daryl grunted in reply, and still continued to look past Rick, out the window. His friend’s detachment tore at Rick’s heart. He knew the archer, knew the man was very possibly hearing, ‘we don’t want you at Alexandria, we’re done with you,’ even though Rick was trying to tell him anything but.

“Two weeks,” Rick pressed on, “or about that, Harlan said. And then we can go home. Back to Alexandria.” His eyes searched Daryl’s face for a response, for anything, locking on to Daryl’s eyes, trying to get the archer to look at him.

“In the meantime, I’m going to stay here.” As though expecting a protest, he bulled ahead, though Daryl had said nothing. “Michonne can handle things back there, and keep an eye on Carl. And Sasha and Maggie are here at the Hilltop too.”

Daryl swallowed painfully and closed his eyes at the mention of Maggie’s name. He took a deep breath, before he opened them again. Once again, he was staring past Rick out the window, though now his eyes were damp with tears, and he’d begun to tremble. Rick wanted more than anything to reach out and place a hand on his friend’s arm, to try to make him understand that it would be okay, but his instincts told him not to touch Daryl, at least not yet.

“What happened with—it’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. _Maggie_ doesn’t blame you,” Rick told him, the earnesty about bleeding from his voice, but he couldn’t see if he was getting through.

Rick knew how his friend harbored guilt, and he let this knowledge sit quietly in the space between them. Daryl heavily drew a breath through his nose, fighting something down, and Rick wondered if this might be his opening in through his friend’s walls.

“Daryl—what happened to you—if you need to—“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Daryl growled, and his eyes flashed dangerously as they finally met Rick’s, his voice low and threatening, and it wasn’t the flashy, ‘stay-back’ type of bravado Rick had often seen during the first months he’d known Daryl as the archer attempted to keep people from getting close—this was a real warning, one laced with feelings he’d had months of mull on and let fester.

The sheer intensity and multitude of things he saw in his friend's face took him aback, and he fell silent for a few more minutes, watching Daryl watch his own broken hands.

“Daryl—I’m sorry we couldn’t get you out sooner,” Rick said, his voice breaking. If you could have a list of regrets in this kind of life, this was certainly on his. More than once, Rick had wanted to risk everything and storm the gates of the Sanctuary, but each time, his levity brought him back, his responsibility to the town of Alexandria as their leader and to the other towns they’d partnered with for this rebellion, his responsibility to the health and safety of the many, not the few. Admittedly, a few times it had taken sitting with Judith, realizing he feared he would not see her grow to be a young woman, and even once or twice, it had taken Michonne’s intervention.

Daryl glanced up, only briefly able to meet the sheriff’s eyes, shrugging his shoulders and offering another grunt before looking back down at his hands. Hands, Rick realized with a pang, that Daryl surely had worked out might never hold a bow again.

Rick groped for something, anything that could make this better, even if its effects were fleeting.

“We found Carol.”

The words came bursting out, as desperate as Rick was for even one bit of good news for his friend. At the woman’s name, Daryl flinched as if he’d been struck. Though he squinted and pawed clumsily at his face, when he looked again at Rick there were tears there but they didn’t fall. Rick charged determinedly on, even as his brain registered his friend's illogical reaction.

“She’s at the Kingdom—another community,” he hastily added, aware Daryl hadn’t been with them for the discovery of the other town, nor their negotiations. Carol had been instrumental in the assault on the Sanctuary, as important a player as King Ezekial, who’d made it clear he greatly respected her, among other things. She was still working through things, Rick knew from his interactions with her, the way she’d tried to still carry herself at a distance even as her determination to help clearly conveyed how much she still cared about their family. And when she’d found out Daryl had been taken prisoner, head the stories of the two times Negan had paraded him around Alexandria’s gates? God help the man who’d have gotten in her way.

“She’s dead,” Daryl ground out, his voice cracking with anguish, and Rick was horrified that his message had been misunderstood.

“No—No, Daryl, she’s not, she’s there--she’s _alive. S_ he helped us plan the attack on the Sanctuary,” Rick hastily blurted out.

Despite himself, Rick felt a warmth creeping into his chest, though it was somewhat cooled by the pain of watching the changes overtake Daryl’s features as he began to comprehend Rick’s words.

“Negan—he—he showed me her—“ Daryl stumbled over his words, even as realization dawned on the archer’s face. “He showed me her stuff,” he finished, refuting his own fears that Rick was wrong, or maybe even that Rick was lying, as he came to that conclusion, and as he finally looked into Rick’s face.

Rick couldn’t help it—it started small, but as he saw the same thing tugging at the corner of Daryl’s lips, even if was just the slightest upward pull, Rick found himself grinning.

“She’s alive,” Rick repeated triumphantly, and Daryl had to duck his head, and the few, short sounds the archer made were both laughter and sobs as he was overwhelmed with relief at his mistake. And when Daryl finally did look back up, there were wet trails down his face, and he wasn’t fighting it, and he was _smiling._

“She’s alive,” Daryl said softly back to him, holding on to those two words like he’d been given the greatest gift in the world.

Daryl was still doing it, that thing that made no sense, that was both laughing and crying, and the sheriff reached out and rested his palm on his friend’s cheek, and then Rick realized he was doing it too. Encouraged by the fact that Daryl had in this moment accepted the physical contact, Rick briefly tipped his head forward and their foreheads rested together. And just as suddenly, Rick too was overwhelmed with relief. And it wasn’t just this—they’d taken down Negan last night, for crying out loud, a source of relief if there had ever been one—but it _was_ , because this was his friend he hadn’t seen in the nearly two months Daryl had been held prisoner, even when Rick _had_ seen him.

And Rick wasn’t a fool, he _knew_ there was a long, bumpy road ahead for Daryl, and he _knew_ he couldn't be certain where it would lead, but he felt an undeniable sense of hope that they would all make it through it together. Just as they always had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeep, I hope that wasn't too corny. That was way harder to write then any of the angsty terrible-ness I wrote before! So anyways, here is the one mostly happy chapter that you're going to get in this story. =P


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gosh, this ended up being a monster--I just couldn't figure out where to split it. I swear I have been working on this for a few weeks and just, it's been like I'm having to plow through. I know it's been way longer than that though, and I really am sorry this took SO LONG, life has been very chaotic (just ended a 5 year relationship and I feel so free but it has also been hard).
> 
> Anyways, thanks everyone for your patience and for continuing to read this story, I appreciate it! Sorry, I feel like it could be greater but its already turned into this giant hulking beast and I'm super beat and I just want to get it posted. Also, I sincerely don't think it will take me so long for the next chapter!
> 
> A quick little note; in regards to the deaths of Abraham Ford and Glenn Rhee I am following canon now, though I originally wrote references to that before it happened and got the deaths backwards. Why? Honestly, because I forgot and didn't feel like re-writing this chapter before posting. But eventually, I'll go back and fix it to canon in that earlier chapter!
> 
> And now, in the words of Negan; back at it!

Three weeks at the Hilltop had dragged by. Daryl was sitting on the porch of the mansion, smoking a cigarette, and disinterestedly watching the activity in the yard through its haze. Smoking was a blessing, one Harlan himself had, had no qualms with, perhaps in the hope it would bring some peace to his patient. Lighting them had initially been a struggle, but one Jesus had kindly seen to—the younger, long-haired man had brought him a matchbox, not a book but an actual box, and even with the splints Daryl was able to pinch the match in the crook between his thumb and his pointer finger and ignite it against the stiff emery paper on the side. The only trouble at this point was remembering the box, but his haunts didn’t consist of a large range, so it usually wasn’t far away.

Daryl drifted through the days in a fog. He stirred each morning at the first rays of sun piercing through the thin curtain to his room, despite the fact that he had little reason to rise from bed. Rick usually woke at the sounds of him stirring, if not before, but it was the moments before his friend woke that Daryl tried to hold on to. Though he could only sometimes recall with clarity the nightmares of the night before, he was certain they occurred every night, and were the source of at least some of the vague unease that filled him each morning. But despite it, the mornings were also when his head felt the most clear, when he felt he could put a finger on the reasons and motivations for his thoughts and actions.

 

_The first night, he’d tried. He hadn’t dismissed Rick’s question as to whether this room would work for him, instead shrugging his shoulders noncommittally, to which Rick had replied that he would be just outside on the sofa—to which Daryl had replied by closing the door in his friend’s face. After a few moments frozen just across the threshold, taking in the floral patterned wallpaper and the bare bedside table, he’d climbed onto the bed he’d been designated. He propped himself upright on the covers, not even removing his shoes, but though he was bone tired, he found himself gripped by an inordinate amount of fear that this might not be real, and that if his eyes slipped closed, he would open them to find himself still bound on the floor of the cell in the Sanctuary. Each time his eyes began to drift shut, he shook himself awake, and the process repeated itself over the next hour. As the lights went out in the yard outside and he found the room truly dark, he began to wonder if he had left the Sanctuary at all, and if perhaps just outside the wooden door only five or six feet from the end of his bed were the cold concrete halls of the Sanctuary, and Negan himself, waiting to reveal that this was yet another trick. He felt the pressure building in his chest, even as another part of himself watched his thought process with disdain and berated him—he’d been with Rick hours before. Rick had walked him across the grounds of the Hilltop and to this room. This was real. All he had to do to prove it was to stand, cross the floor, and open the door into the foyer of the mansion._

_However, the terror that gripped him at the possibility that it wasn’t kept him rooted to the spot. This went on for hours, Daryl sitting upright and wide awake in bed, until suddenly he wasn’t. At some point the combination of the meds and his sheer exhaustion led him to finally fall asleep._

_He’d come to, to a horrible racket, finding himself kicking and struggling on the ground, two arms tightly pinning his own to his side even as his booted heels scrabbled for traction on the wood floor, and vaguely, his brain had recognized the voice behind him as Rick’s. Not Negan’s._

_“Daryl, it’s okay, you’re at the Hilltop, you’re safe,” the voice repeated over and over like a mantra, and even as Daryl sucked wind, he felt himself go limp in both relief and then shortly after, humiliation. He’d been the one screaming, though he’d now fallen silent. The restraint he’d felt on his ankles was nothing more than his own blanket that had tangled in his legs, likely in his flight from the bed._

_Sobs tore from his mouth, the adrenaline pumping through his system sending his emotions into overdrive now that his brain had registered there was no actual threat. From where he was sprawled, he longingly stared at the dark space under the bed, where he wished he could crawl away to and disappear. Rick perhaps sensed this because though his grip was no longer one of restraint, he didn’t loosen his hold, refusing to allow his friend to trade the comfort he didn’t believe he deserved for the cold reassurance of a dark and lonely space._

 

That early morning episode had been concluded when Daryl, drained of anything further and now truly silent, had moved several feet away to the bare floor past the foot of the bed, dragged his twisted blanket up over his shoulders, and fallen asleep. Rick, too wired from everything that had happened, had sat blearily against the wall until he too had drifted off in the early pre-dawn hours, and those two uncomfortable looking positions were how Sasha had found them in the morning when she’d brought them breakfast.

Since then, their sleeping arrangement had slowly shifted. Daryl refused initially to sleep in the bed again, dragging several blankets and a pillow to the floor, and once it became apparent this was not an argument Rick would win, he brought his own things in and took the bed. Only after a week of this, when Harlan had discovered the situation and exclaimed in frustration that it was unhelpful to him gauging the healing process when Daryl’s whole body was stiff and painful from the nights on the hard ground, had a second twin bed been moved in. Though Daryl had balked at it, stating a preference for a solid surface similar to how he’d slept the months previous, he’d had no choice with the little remaining floor space being too small for him to sleep even in the curled up manner he had previously—and it had turned out that with the reassurance of having a friend nearby, though the bad dreams still plagued him, he was able to.

They fell into a routine where though Rick occasionally went to retrieve breakfast, it was often Sasha or Jesus who would bring it by, all, Daryl knew, in an effort to keep him from having to brave the orchestrated chaos and prying eyes of the main kitchen. This was also when he had to take the first round of meds for the day, and when his mind began to feel fuzzy.

He’d thought about protesting it. Trying to calmly tell Rick that it made his head cloudy, made it hard for him to think, maybe his tongue feel heavy and his mouth woolen, but each morning as he came close, he stopped himself short of it, the complaints feeling juvenile. He was already a burden to these people—to his _friends_. Whatever they asked of him, to make him less so, he would do.

Jesus brought him a crutch the second morning, only moments before he’d been about to unload a stream of frustrated profanities over having to rely on another person to move about. The young man, apparently sensing how close he’d come, gave him a cheerful smile that exemplified the hippie’s personality, which Daryl found to be equally kind and irritating.

Some mornings after he’d eaten, he had to check in with Harlan, though these visits varied greatly in length. Though Daryl hadn’t looked at himself in days, had actively avoided it, he could still feel the skin around his eye and over his cheek was warm and puffy, the swelling slightly obscuring his vision—but Harlan told him the fractures in his face were healing as well as could be reasonably expected. Occasionally Harlan asked Rick to sit these meetings out, and Daryl didn’t protest this, finding it grating enough to have to discuss his “feelings” with just the doctor. During these times, Harlan would ask him about his moods, sometimes asking Daryl to expand on why he’d felt a certain way, as he took notes. Despite his reluctance to go into detail, Daryl was fairly honest in his answers, and though he’d done his best to downplay anything he thought might negatively affect the Doctor’s opinion on his release, he had a suspicion that were Harlan speaking to Rick on separate occasions, his friend would rat him out.

Though Harlan encouraged him to use his bad leg and he’d been fitted with a brace, the doctor had been sure to stress the importance of not putting undue strain on it. The brace, he’d said while looking pointedly at Daryl, was an aid in stabilizing his leg, not a substitute for the bone being fully healed. Between that and the state of his fingers, there was not a lot Daryl could do in the way of helping out.

All of these physical restrictions were nessecary as his body sought to mend, but it was apparent to even Daryl that these mentally had left him in a bad place. However, even as all three of them clearly recognized it, there was little they could offer him for the first couple weeks. Once his fingers had mended some, Harlan told them, they would be able to take off his splints and he could begin some exercises to try to regain a range of movement in them. In the mean time, he tried not to lose his mind waiting for those days to come.

He found himself frequently at the graves of his friends. Though he often spent great amounts of time thinking about them, it was also one of the only places he could find that he was given space from his living friends but also didn’t feel that surge of anxiety at finding himself alone.

 

_The first day he’d gone to see them, it’d been raining, the kind of gray drizzle that sits heavy in the air all day and makes it hard to tell how much time has passed, or if any has at all. Rick had walked him to the small grassy area alongside the wall, but then the sheriff had stopped and let his friend approach the long mounds of soil alone. Slowly, Daryl’s feet carried him the final few steps to stand between them. Flowers lay at the top of each—they were fresh, their edges only just beginning to shrivel. They’d been laid there this morning. A small pile of stones marked the head of each grave, and Daryl dropped to his knees beside the one closest to him, his fingers brushing over the smooth skin of the rock pile that served as the headstone. From there, he slid his hands down into the dirt, running his palms over the curve of the soil, before finally they returned to his lap, streaking his pants with red dust. There, his fingers twisted in each other and in the fabric of his jeans for several long minutes. He felt Rick’s gaze leave him, knew his friend had turned away to give him his privacy, knowing too that a comforting hand would burn Daryl’s flesh like an iron brand. No longer surveilled, the archer’s skin cooled in the rain, steam rising from his back and dissipating into the chilly air._

_He thought about Sasha, who’d lost Bob and then Tyreese and then nearly lost herself too in the long, hot days on the road, who’d found something she’d probably thought was gone for good with Abraham, and then lost him too. He thought about Abe, perhaps the member of his family Daryl could have butted heads with the most, but who'd come to be family none the less, and who'd been loyal to that family with every bone in his body. He thought about Maggie, who along with her sister watched her beloved father beheaded by a madman with a sword, who’s same sister now haunted both his dreams and his waking hours, who’d suffered like Sasha and like him on that same road to Virginia. He thought about about the baby growing in Maggie's belly, and the day he’d sat across from her as she held a sonogram and hands with Glenn Rhee in that RV. He thought about her dead husband, and how the light had filtered through the trees and glinted across his friend's face that day in the woods when Glenn had pleaded with him to give up his hunt for Dwight and_ come home. 

_The few tears that escaped the squinted corners of his eyes disappeared among the small droplets of water falling from the sky to his skin, and in this way, the mist hid his crying just as the soft patter of water droplets hid his whimpers—but there was no disguise that could mute his grief, just as the rain failed to conceal he shake of his shoulders as he began to cry._

 

This dilemma, torn between constant needs of freedom and reassurance, was also the reason he frequently found himself burning through packs of cigarettes as he dazedly occupied porch steps, as he did now. Waiting. It felt like all he ever did, because mostly, it was. And it hadn’t started with his arrival at the Hilltop—it had started months ago with that dim room. With being taken prisoner. The scenery had changed, but he was still there, still locked up, still trapped in that fucking cell. Still alone.

He saw two familiar figures crossing the yard, and when Sasha, the second of them, waved, he gave the slightest nod of acknowledgement, but as she and Maggie moved on, his gaze remained put, and unfocused.

 

_When Daryl had looked up that afternoon to see her standing in the doorway of the medical trailer, he found he wasn’t surprised, even though at times before he’d wondered if she would even come. He found himself squinting at the silhouette of her, her hands on her hips, his eyes watering because of the sunlight at her back._

_Maggie stepped into the room and even as she crossed to him, his eyes moved over the small but growing bump of her belly and he felt things turning in him that he couldn’t identify, and he clasped his hands over each other and stared at them. The shame in his gut that he couldn’t look at her finally drove him to lift his gaze, even as he’d begun to tremble, blinking rapidly as he looked up, dirty strings of hair falling across his face but not obscuring his eyes enough to shield him from what he saw._

_And what he saw was the way she was looking back at him, soft and feeling, and there was so much love there Daryl thought,_ spilling _out of her, that he tensed as though afraid it might burn him. Maggie hardly hesitated though, leaning in to wrap her arms around the archer and pull him tight against her. As she wrapped her arms tightly but gently around his back, he buried his face in her neck and twisted his hands in the fabric of the back of her shirt, and some of the tension, though not all, left his shoulders. His relief was overwhelming—that Maggie was okay, that her baby was okay. That she didn’t_ hate _him. He knew she could feel the way he’d begun to quake against her, the tiny, hitching breaths moving in and out of him, because one of her hands moved gently to the back of his head, and she rocked with him slightly._

_And even as every touch was soothing, the comfort was tempered by an immense amount of guilt—Daryl knew in his heart, as steady and constant as each beat the muscle made, that his actions had taken the life of his friend and her husband. He was the reason her unborn baby would grow up without his father. And here she was, cradling him, stroking his hair, while he cried about it. The feeling that he didn’t deserve this, any of this, but especially_ this _began to spread, permeating his entire body. Their embrace started to hurt as much as it soothed, and then more, and he let it throb until he couldn’t bear it anymore, and then he pulled away. His gaze, self-conscious, rested on the damp spot on her shoulder where he’d been, once again not brave enough to meet her eyes._

_When Daryl finally peered at her, through his tears and his greasy hair, he struggled with the small, knowing smile she had waiting for him. He tried to look down but ever so softly she withheld that escape, cupping his cheek gently and lifting his chin. Pinned down by her green eyes, Daryl felt exposed, naked, her gaze like a physical restraint as her words washed over him like water. And there was mercy there, but there was a firmness too, a knowledge that sometimes healing was painful, and so this appeared to allow her to push on even as the archer radiated discomfort._

_“It’s not your fault, Daryl.”_

_Maggie spoke calmly, and with certainty, and Daryl didn’t feel rage or a desire to lash out in disagreement as he might have with someone else, only a desire to cower, but she held him still._

_“None of it is,” she finished, and fell silent. As softly as she was looking at him, Daryl still couldn’t help but blink and draw back, like something that had emerged from the dark into the bright of day._

_Finally, Maggie took pity on him and let him go, and Daryl felt as though he’d been allowed to crawl from a spotlight back to the shadows, a sweet release hitting him so hard his hands began to shake visibility, and he stared miserably at the sheets._

_“We’ll get you a proper room, proper clothes,” Maggie told him, her voice taking on an authority she’d gained as she’d moved into a leadership role at the Hilltop. Perhaps she could sense the moment was over, not because the archer_ wanted _it to be, but because this was all Daryl could manage. He nodded dazedly._

_“Give you a chance to clean up, now that Harlan’s patched you up.” She paused, and he braved looking at her one final time, and her gaze softened, as her voice quieted, and she was just Maggie again. “Get you your own space,” she added. Daryl swallowed, and nodded again, and he had no words for how grateful he would be for that, but he didn’t need them—she knew._

 

They’d prescribed him things, a litany of pills that by the time he finished them would probably be longer then all the ones he’d taken in his life before put together. An antibiotic, to clear out the infection that had caused his fever, and ensure his fractures continued to heal. Painkillers, two different ones, one he was supposed to take twice a day and one that was just for when things got really bad, which for the first week had been just about all the time. And a fourth one—something to help him “re-acclimate” Harlan had said, to stabilize his nerves. Daryl liked this last one the least, wondered if it was what made his head feel fuzzy sometimes or if that was the multiple hard hits he’d taken to the skull the past weeks, but he took it anyway without protest, each breakfast and each dinner. Sometimes, when nothing was striking him particularly strongly and overwhelming it, it dampened his feelings, peeled them off and then bundled him away to where he could watch them swirl around at a distance as if they were happening to someone else.

 

_Sometimes he saw her on the edges of his vision and fleeting, and when he turned to look directly at her, she was always gone. At first Daryl had waited, playing along and trying to be patient. He watched her from the corners of his eyes when she came, and initially he’d felt a sense of shame, as though his sidelong looks were something sneaky, both because he didn’t have to face her and because no one around him knew she was there. This sensation rapidly transformed into frustration though as the days passed and still she watched him from the sidelines, occasionally speaking to him, but never allowing him to answer, vanishing like the ghost she was when he’d turn to confront her._

_Daryl had, had his share of unfair treatment in this world and the last, more than enough to know that ‘fair’ was a privilege, but if there was one person to be fair, it should have been Beth, and the injustice of her treatment rankled him. And so finally, one day, he was done waiting for her, done taking her measured words of advice without her having to consider why she might be wrong, and he’d tried shouting and raging and found, as he could have easily guessed, that this made her no more cooperative and only served to make him appear even more of a lunatic._

_“I can see her—I can see her,” Daryl had choked out, in a futile effort to justify his previous shouting to his friend, who was staring at him in bewilderment._

_“Who, Daryl?” Rick had asked, his tone even, his gaze now steady, despite the scene Daryl knew he was making. Even as Daryl had stared at the empty space in front of him where she’d just been, he’d seen her once more from the corner of his eye, and he couldn’t answer Rick, instead whirling for her._

_Rick had grabbed his stray hand as Daryl grappled with the air to his right, seeking to seize his mirage, and the archer had reacted instinctually against the restraint, resulting in him finding himself with his arms pinned behind him as Rick wrapped him in what could have been defined both as a constraint and a hug._

_Despite his heavy breaths taken from the effort it took to hold his friend still, when Rick had spoken again, he’d managed to keep his voice level._

_“Who can you see, Daryl?” he’d repeated._

_“Beth,” Daryl had grunted, his own unsteady breaths threatening to break into tears of frustration. This brief break in Daryl’s ability to move had broken what had been passing through him though, and his energy had slipped through his hands like sand, and he’d slumped, and Rick, perhaps under the archer’s weight, or in both relief and surprise at having averted a full-on outburst, or in shock at the mention of one of their family dead for so long, or maybe some of all three, had felt his knees giving out. To his credit, Rick had managed to bring them both down onto the ground upright, though the landing was heavy, where his arms wrapped around his friend were now no longer to physically stop him, but to help both of them. Rick hadn’t been able to see Daryl’s eyes, but he’d swallowed and shaken his head._

_“She’s dead Daryl. She’s dead,” Rick had told him._

 

Daryl gazed blearily down at his hands, cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, nearly burned to the filter now. _Ugly._ That was the right word for them, the shiny, twisted masses that were the backs of his hands, dotted here and there with fresher pink circles. He thought about adding another one, taking the butt of the cigarette clumsily between the pointer finger and thumb of his left hand and watching it smoke, but footsteps and a clearing throat announcing Jesus’ arrival made him think better of it. He stubbed the cigarette out on his boot, then flicked the butt into the dirt, knowing the younger man would disapprove of the litter. Daryl nearly snorted to himself; _littering_. The world was littered with things now. From the corner of his eye, he watched Jesus fold his hands together, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the railing as he stayed standing, looking out at the yard also.

 

_Still, even after that day with Rick, Beth continued to watch him and to speak to him, and so finally, in this third week, he understood. Sometimes Daryl would pretend she wasn’t there though he could never bring himself to will her away, and sometimes he would watch her back from the edges of his eyes, and sometimes he would mumble back to her from the corner of his mouth, but he accepted it for what it was and he moved on. He knew he was crazy. He knew she wasn’t real._

 

“You’re looking better,” Jesus quipped, and Daryl couldn’t tell if he was serious or poking fun. He grunted in reply.

The Hilltop’s scout had saved his life, Daryl knew, and Daryl didn’t like feeling like he owed anybody, and sometimes he wondered if he even had anything to be grateful for. Rick had stuck to his word, sticking irritatingly close to the archer’s side, though if Daryl was honest with himself, his friend’s near-constant presence had been more often a comfort than an annoyance, even if he refused to admit it. However, as the days had passed into the third week, and Harlan had refused to clear Daryl to leave, Rick had, had to leave, promising to return within the week. The doctor’s denial of Daryl’s departure had inspired in the archer one of the very fits of rage that had kept Harlan from dismissing him.

The details of that day were fuzzy, and Daryl struggled now to even recollect them, despite it only having been days before. He knew they’d been sitting in one of the parlor rooms in the mansion, a space that by its very nature made Daryl uncomfortable to start with. He remembered that he’d only half-listened as Harlan rattled off medical notes. He remembered that anxiety began to build inside his chest like a thundercloud coming together, that he felt that even though Harlan had not yet made his announcement, he knew it would be that he had to stay longer. He remembered that when it all became too much, he’d stood, moving away from the opposing couches where Rick and Harlan still sat, and begun to pace, an awkward but regular shuffle, accompanied by the heavy thump of the crutch. He remembered that his steps had been rapid, and sharp, but steady. He remembered Harlan stopping Rick from standing and coming to him. He remembered the contempt he’d felt bubbling up in him for both of the men, and the corresponding horror he’d felt at it, as Rick’s gaze moved between Harlan and him, concerned by his behavior and also clearly imploring that Daryl participate in what the sheriff felt was an important conversation. Even now, as Daryl tried to remember, he felt those same feelings rising up in him, out of place where he now sat on the porch.

 

_Pacing in the room, he could_ hear _that he was breathing more heavily, that same tightness as from the cell building in his chest, and that was it, this was just another cage, another place to be trapped. Thoughts raced around in his head, and one came after the next faster and faster, and it was like throwing up, like the words were the contents of his stomach and they were rising unstoppably up his throat, and the pressure in his chest built until it broke and like water from a breached damn, panic flooded through him._

_I’m not staying, I won’t stay, I_ can’t _stay, I can’t breathe, we’ve got to go, I’ve got to go, I’m fine, I’m okay, I can be okay, I want to be okay, I’m going home, please_ let me go _, I want to go home, I want to go_ home _—_

_A motto, over and over, and he couldn’t distinguish where the thoughts in his mind ended and the words leaving his mouth began as the surged together, a boiling, foaming torrent. Like a dog with its leg caught in a steel trap, the fear that filled him became a_ rage _erupting out of him, senseless and explosive, and he was here, but he was still_ there _, a cage, a cell, and the steadying hand on his arm may as well have been an enemy’s, a Savior’s, because in the blink of an eye he combusted, shoving, punching, howling, clawing, and always fighting, fighting,_ fighting.

_Like so many other infuriating moments, Daryl came back to himself shuddering and soaked in sweat, sprawled on the floor, his sense of time utterly ruined and lost, the hands and arms and knees that pinned him only releasing their pressure as the trembling spread through his body—indicating that the terror that had gripped him and the strength it gave him had passed and he was nothing but a worthless cripple once more._

 

He knew why Harlan had ordered that he stay, and knowing the doctor’s valid reasons only made him hate it more. They’d battled through this over and over in the past weeks, the outcomes seeming to vary with no rhyme or reason. Sometimes a touch, a word, a presence could bring him down. Sometimes, though these were rarer still, he could do it on his own. Other times, far more often, every attempt at comfort drove him farther over the edge and he completely and utterly lost control. The problem, as much as the violent outbursts, was the absolute lack of predictability.

Jesus had remained close, available—though he’d given Daryl room to breathe more than the Sheriff had during the first two weeks, he stuck perhaps a little closer now that Daryl was alone. Daryl had been prepared to balk and stand his ground at the merest mention of having to share the room, but as usual, Jesus was ahead of him. Silently and with no trace of sympathy that Daryl could detect, though he scowled at the younger man anyway, the first night Daryl found himself alone again, Jesus offered him a small plastic solar lantern. The archer didn’t respond initially, leaving Jesus to awkwardly withdraw his outstretched hand and instead place the item on the bare bedside table, saying nothing more than a simple ‘goodnight’ and closing the door behind himself as he exited. Daryl head the scout noisily settling himself on the couch just outside, and his scowl deepened with the thought that Jesus was making an unnecessary racket in order to reassure Daryl that he was remaining nearby. Still though, as the last of the lights outside went, Daryl turned the lamp on, and found the long shadows it cast to be far less menacing then the complete and total darkness his room fell into in the late hours of the night otherwise. His furious internal remarks about the absurdity of a grown, forty-something year old man having developed a fear of the dark were drowned out by his exhaustion, and though he slept fitfully, he slept. He muttered his thanks to Jesus the next morning both under his breath and around a piece of toast, but that didn’t stop the scout from smiling back at him. Though he’d resisted it initially, while Jesus may not have been family, Daryl had realized he’d come to accept the man as friend of sorts, and that the scout had come to feel similarly about him, and considering how few of those he had these days, he took it.

Sasha was quite busy as Maggie’s right hand at the Hilltop, but when she’d had the time, she too visited him. Quite often, after a brief initial conversation, they sat together in silence, but Daryl didn’t mind it, and he didn’t think she did either.

And then Maggie—well, Maggie was even busier, at least that’s what Daryl told himself, but it wasn’t just that. She saw what she did to him, and it _hurt_ her, seeing how bad just being in her presence hurt him, and so she kept their interactions brief, though they didn’t cease. Long enough for him to remember who they’d been, remind him that he was her _family_ , and for him to start to taste that fear, rising in his throat like bile, but short enough that it never spilled out of him, short enough that he didn’t _lose it_. Like he was a feral dog, and slowly, inch by inch, she was trying to convince him that he could be safe with her.

Still, the comforting presence of his friends and family who were at the Hilltop also reminded him of all of those who weren't here--those in Alexandria. And at the Kingdom.

 

_Several days had passed, and with it, any of the good will Daryl had found at being among his family again. They were all trying, showing him they cared, but the person missing was painfully obvious, and Daryl’s question (“Why?”), had become an ache, and then an open wound, festering in his gut. He couldn’t move on, and he couldn’t ignore it, and each day he poked and he prodded and it didn’t heal. As he sat on a metal chair in the medical trailer and Harlan wrapped his hand in fresh gauze, his foot began to tap the floor where it lightly rested, his knee jiggling up and down with impatience. When the door opened and Rick ducked inside, he moved to meet him, but Harlan’s objection of, “Daryl, please” brought him back to his seat._

_“Where is she?” he asked, and he felt betrayed by the rough quality of his voice, and he inhaled heavily through his nose and dragged his free arm across it, but his eyes never left Rick’s._

_Rick, for his part, briefly glanced to the window on his left, but even as he shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, he looked Daryl in the face again. The drawn quiet was punctuated by Harlan sliding on a wheeled chair several feet and beginning to wrap Daryl’s other hand, and as the anxiety burbled and he felt the pressure build in his chest, he began to tap quickly his foot again against the linoleum, and the loud repetitive noise filled the silence, but Daryl couldn’t stop it._

_“She’s recovering still,” Rick finally answered lamely, and briefly the archer’s knee increasing the rate at which it was now bouncing up and down was his only reply. It was Daryl’s turn to look away, unable to meet his friend’s eyes. He felt his neck flush and his face grow warm, and he belatedly but distinctly recognized the feeling permeating his body as shame, and that in itself embarrassed him further. As Harlan finished with his second hand, he brought it immediately to his mouth, biting at the tips of his fingers that were exposed from the splints, his jaw tight. The doctor sighed but made no comment on it, instead telling Rick, “he’s ready to go.” He then gave the Sheriff a pointed look._

_“She asked about you,” Rick said, and though the tapping didn’t cease, after a moment, Daryl looked his way again, though he only managed it briefly before his face twisted and his gaze dropped to the floor._

_“Look, Daryl, things are in pieces after everything, and everyone is just trying to put them back together.” Rick raked a hand through his hair, and then it was his turn to sigh in resignation, as though he hesitated to speak this next sentence._

_“But she’ll come. She told me should would,” he said, and these last words were like a promise. Daryl took them inside of himself and kept them there, where he felt them like the flutter of wings against the cage of his ribs. He still didn’t look up, but his foot fell still and the room dropped again into silence aside from the beeping of machines._

_“Let’s go,” Rick said, proffering a hand in Daryl’s direction, but the archer struggled to his feet on his own, grabbing the crutch that rested on the wall and hobbling past the sheriff through the door and into the sun._

 

Daryl spared a glance to where Jesus shifted from one foot to the other next to him, and was irked, though not surprised, to see that the scout was grinning at him. The younger man had a way of getting under his skin. Daryl suspected it was his incessant optimism, likely made all the worse by the fact that it was genuine. 

“Seriously,” Jesus said, and now his gaze was back on the yard before them, “I heard Harlan’s cleared you to go home by the end of the week.”

_Home_. Daryl wasn’t sure what that even was anymore, wasn’t sure why this approval on the doctor’s part was even something he wanted—he felt no strong desire to return to Alexandria, only a burning drive to get away from _here_. 

“Conditionally,” Daryl mumbled, and Jesus looked surprised that he’d answered, turning towards him, hands still folded together.

“What?” the younger man asked.

“He’s conditionally cleared me. If I’m still _progressing,_ ” Daryl spat this last word out like it was a bad piece of meat. He didn’t hae to mention the fact that he hadn’t been cleared after the two weeks. It already hung heavy in the air and the silence between them.

Jesus shrugged his shoulders in a manner that seem noncommittal, but his smile had returned slightly. There was a grimness that tugged at the younger man’s lips but still, Daryl thought as the younger man spoke, there was that god-damned optimism again.

“You will.”

‘Fuck you,’ Daryl thought, but he kept his words silent, instead only scoffing again, before making to smoke another cigarette, though the process was painfully drawn out as he fumbled to remove first the pack from his breast pocket and then the cigarette from the pack. Jesus watched him from the corner of his eye, but knew better than to try to help.

_“Be nice,”_ a voice admonished from his other side, a voice Daryl knew only he could hear, the sweetness of it making him feel sick, his gut churning. He saw her standing there on the edge of his vision, as she almost always was, one ankle crossed over the other, using her one heel to scratch an itch on her other ankle almost absent-mindedly. He brought the cigarette to his mouth, where it hung limply from his lips, unlit.

“I am,” Daryl mumbled around the cigarette, and he saw Jesus’ brow knit—whether or not he’d understood the low words, the younger man hadn’t failed to notice Daryl’s new peculiar habit of occasionally talking to himself under his breath—but the scout didn’t comment on it. Daryl nearly laughed as a scornful grimace stretched his lips instead. If his outbursts were concerning to his family, he could only imagine the meltdown that would occur if anyone knew the half of what was going on in his head.

 

_He clumsily wiped the fog from the bathroom mirror with the washcloth that had been intended for his body, but which he’d left abandoned on the sink until now. His family had coerced him into the shower as much for his own good as theirs after months of sitting in his own filth in that cell. His knuckles were white as he gripped the porcelain edges of the sink, clutching it as though it was all that held him upright. The face that stared back at him was unrecognizable, and Daryl struggled to not shrink back, to force himself to stand up into what was only one more in a line of blows. The long, ragged strands of his unkempt hair hung over his eyes but did little to hide the miserable condition of his face. The water that had run over his skin had washed away the layers of grime, but what was left was worse. No longer hidden by the dirt, the scars stood out pink and fresh, like scalds, across his face, neck, and chest. The flesh around his eye was distended, soft and still oozing purples and blues like a bruised piece of fruit. The thing looking back at him was a monster, as hideous outside now as he felt inside._

_He knew he hated the thing staring out of the glass at him, felt it as true as he felt his own pulse, and building with each beat of his heart it swelled in his chest until he felt he was about to burst. He screamed at the repulsive creature that watched him from the glass, and it screamed back. His hands curled into fists, and as sudden as a strike of lightning, he brought both fists to the glass. It shattered, tiny shards spraying his face and naked body, and larger shards slicing the soft flesh of his arms, but he felt nothing, and he brought his limbs to bear against the broken surface again and again. There was blood everywhere—staining the sink, coating his arms, dripping to the tile and leaving the floor slick, and as he brought his hands miserably to his scrub at his face he smeared it over his flesh like finger paint._

_When he lowed his hands, Daryl was still alone, except for his horrible reflection, staring back at him from the whole mirror. His arms bore the thick pink scars of his previous treatment, but no bleeding open wounds. His chest, ruined and pitted, its soft brown hair fractured into patches by jagged lines, still rose and fell. He knew the air that swirled around his naked body was cold, but he couldn’t feel it. Slowly, painstakingly, he dressed himself in the jeans and t-shirt that had been left for him beside the tub._

 

Daryl finished his cigarette in silence, Jesus remaining uncharacteristically quiet as well. The archer considered lighting a third one, clumsily withdrawing the pack from his pocket and turning it over in his fingers. Beside him, he saw Jesus straighten, sensed that the younger man’s demeanor had turned more serious and then that he was about to speak by the intake of his breath, and that imminent threat caused Daryl to tense, something he knew the scout wouldn’t miss but that wouldn’t stop him either. However, Jesus was halted instead by the sound of several vehicles approaching the gates, and then the grating noise as it slid open. He stuffed the pack of cigarettes back in his pocket. Outside the gate idled the three vehicles that had left earlier in the week for the Kingdom, now loaded with goods that Ezekiel had likely insisted on sending back. Daryl didn’t wait to see who emerged from the cars, standing shakily to his feet with the help of the porch railing.

“Daryl no, don’t—“ and she was there, her hand on his arm, and the pleading quality in her voice sent dread spiking through his veins as he wondered what she already knew. Or thought she knew. Angrily, Daryl shook her off—more and more, it seemed she failed to appear when he thought he need her, only making her presences known when she thought she knew better and wanted to intervene.

“Let me go,” he muttered hotly, his gaze never leaving the gates. He’d recognized Rick before he’d gotten ot, but now his friend stood by a passenger’s door, directing another man from his group as to where the supplies would go.

“Daryl, hang on,” Jesus said loudly, moving to help him, but the archer had already stumbled down the stairs to the grass, apparently heedless of the fact that he barely caught himself at the bottom, the crutch taking most of his weight as it hit the dirt heavily. And then Daryl was moving across the lawn towards the small caravan with a purpose that told Jesus if he intervened, he would most certainly find himself on the ground, and the scout lingered instead on the bottom step.

Daryl hobbled the last few feet more slowly before coming to a halt, and briefly staring Rick in the face, searching his friend for an answer he could feel, with rising dread, that he already knew. Still, he shifted his weight onto his crutch and leaned to look around the sheriff, to take stock of each face that filed through the open gate behind, even scanned the two that remained in the drivers’ seats to move the cars inside once the occupants had dispersed, searching for a head of short-cropped grey hair and a pair of blue eyes and finding none. Rick didn’t try to hold him, his eyes dropping to the ground—in a sense of failure or remorse, or in a desire to avoid what he knew was coming, Daryl didn’t know. He felt the hope that he’d kept alive in his chest, who’s life he’d prolonged with the smallest morsels nessecary to keep it still beating a single day more, however pitiful and emaciated, burn up to ash in his mouth.

“She’s not here,” Daryl said, and to his dismay, his voice, while harsh, wasn’t accusatory but broken, the meanness he’d brought back from the past in these recent weeks to draw up like a shield all but gone.

“I’m sorry Daryl,” Rick said quietly, and his soft, defeated manner—his sincerity—caused fury to rip white-hot through Daryl. 

_She’s not coming_. 

Rick didn’t have to speak the words aloud—his yielding posture said it all. Daryl glanced to the porch, who’s safety neither Jesus nor his mirage of Beth had braved leaving, though the both watched him with arms folded across their chests. He’d never seen either look so apprehensive and at this information, heat rose to Daryl’s face—he felt sure they’d both _known_. Everyone had known, apparently, everyone but him, and they’d let him go on believing, even led him on, like the dumb beast he was.

_“Wouldn’t kill you to have a little faith,” that voice said, and clear as day, it wasn’t the blonde woman watching him from the porch but a memory, an echo from an argument past._

“Fucking bitch,” Daryl snarled, and even though he knew he was only so angry because of how much it hurt him that she did not _want_ to see him, he meant the words, would have shouted them in Carol herself’s face had she been here (but then, this wouldn’t have been happening).

He rounded the full force of his rage on Rick in an effort to distract his thoughts from her, jabbing his friend in the chest with a finger of the hand that didn’t clutch the crutch for support. “And _you_ ,” he hissed, “you’re a fucking _liar.”_

Rick flinched, glancing only momentarily to the ground, before forcing himself to meet the archer’s eyes again. This—not attempting to defend Carol, or even himself, just Rick, shoulders slumped, standing silently, unarmed and exhausted behind the several days of gray stubble— _this_ was worse.

Daryl wanted to hit something, wanted to _fight_ , and he slammed his palm flat against Rick’s chest and shoved.

“You don’t got nothing to say to that?” Daryl shouted, and he saw from the corners of his eyes the lookout on the wall shift to glance at them. He didn’t like it, but he was too furious to rein himself back in and avoid making a scene.

Rick didn’t bite though, just took a step back to catch himself, his hands only rising the slightest bit in a placating gesture.

“I’m sorry,” Rick repeated, his tone still soft.

“You’re so full of shit, you can’t keep your stories straight,” Daryl bit out, but his resolve was cracking, Rick’s acceptance seeming to absorb his venom, and he found himself blinking furiously at the pricking sensation behind his eyes. This filled Daryl with panic as his anger was replaced by an ache that throbbed so hard it threatened to bring him to his knees. It was the archer’s turn to take a step back now, put distance between them. His eyes had narrowed to slits as he fought to keep the raw agony from his face.

“Sorry don’t mean shit anymore,” Daryl managed to rasp, the words ragged and torn, and he scrubbed his free hand desperately over his face.

The fight had left him and now all he wanted was to run—but there was nowhere to go. Lame as he was, outside the gates would be a death sentence, and Rick would never let him go. And there was no place inside the walls to escape all of these people—not the majority for whom he held nothing but contempt for, let alone the ones considered his family.

As he spun away from the gate, he discovered to his unpleasant surprise that the scattered beginnings of a crowd had formed, though they had not so much gathered as found themselves interrupted from their other activities by the commotion.

“The hell are y’all looking at? Y’all want a season pass? Show’s over,” he bristled, and this was as natural as anything, a defense he’d spent his life employing. Most of the Hilltop didn’t know him well, and all they saw, not unlike folk in the days before the dead started walking, was a hostile and brutish man, and they quickly scattered.

Daryl didn’t dare to look back at Rick and risk falling apart, and instead limped along the wall away from both the gate and the manor, making for the graves of his two friends, the only place he could hope for some peace.

The problem with this charade though was that once you let people get in close to you, your bravado became transparent—they figured you out for nothing more than a wounded animal, all snarls and bared teeth trying to hide your weak spot. And then, sooner or later, they came to the decision that it was worth pushing you, risking a bite, if it was in the name of doing some good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were curious, the song 'Illuminate' by Luuul is pretty much was I listened to for repeat on hours to finish this chapter for some reason. There is a really great fan video here (not mine); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pwKUzn0ELc that beautifully portrays Rick and Daryl's relationship to this song. Feedback on the chapter always appreciated, especially because I felt some of this was a struggle!


End file.
